How - Dov Seidman [69]
As the world transitions to a bottom-up and side-to-side model in which each individual can contribute to the free flow of ideas, it opens up and becomes more transparent. An information society is a dialogical society, one based on the interactive sharing of information among mutually interested parties. Equalized access to information allows more people to act in an informed manner, a lesson Kryptonite learned the hard way. And though it was able to eventually repair the damage to its reputation with a product recall and redesign, in an information world, Kryptonite discovered it is harder to hide from the truth. Everything we do, say, or represent can be verified or disproved easily and relatively cheaply. While Kryptonite’s underestimation and lethargy was a big, public spectacle, it is also an example of a million small interactions that happen every day in business. A salesman tells one potential customer one thing in Chicago and a different lead another thing in Phoenix, believing that the information will never be compared or exchanged. You tell your boss one thing about your recent business trip, forgetting that her easy access to your expense receipts tells her something different. A job applicant exaggerates a university degree he never received, and is easily discovered by a $10 background check.
Transparency—the new conditions of the world that allow us to see past the medium to get to the heart of the message—fundamentally changes almost every way we conduct our lives in public (and in private), demanding a new set of HOWs if we really want to thrive. To understand these changes, we must consider two types of transparency: technological and interpersonal. Technological transparency describes the ever-evolving state of the networked world, the transparency that happens to us—transparency as a noun, if you will. These are the conditions that Kryptonite fell prey to. Interpersonal transparency centers on the realm of HOW we do what we do—transparency as an action, as a way of being, as a verb to be transparent. This is the active transparency we bring to our interactions with others. These two forms of transparency live in a symbiotic relationship, each fueling the other synergistically. The question before us as we consider what we need to thrive in the internetworked world is: How do we conquer our fear of exposure and turn these new realities into new abilities and behaviors? How can we become proactive about transparency?
BEYOND PROXIES AND SURROGATES
I was watching CNN when the jury in the Scott Peterson murder trial, one of the most publicized celebrity trials of the past few years, handed down its death penalty verdict. In the aftermath of the verdict, I happened to catch an interview with one of the jurors. When asked how the jury reached its decision, the juror said that the testimony of Amber Frye, Peterson’s mistress, about their tawdry extramarital dalliances, had little to do with convicting him of the crime of killing his wife and unborn child, but everything to do with giving him a death sentence. Her testimony revealed the most about his character and intentions. 7 This statement struck me. In legal terminology, Frye’s testimony went to “malice aforethought” and “depravity of the heart,” and these amorphous unprovable notions were the key information the jury needed to consider. Jury foreman Steve Cardosi, when asked if Peterson could have helped himself by testifying in the case, said something just as remarkable. “You know, given his past and his level of honesty,” he said, “it probably would