Yes, it’s really true. Nobody can hide anything anymore in our digital age of transparency. And thus, Dov Seidman, author of the re-released How and CEO of LRN, says we have entered an “era of behavior” in which we can no longer separate our private and public lives.
As Seidman told me when we caught up earlier this week on Skype, the era of behavior means that our reputations now always “precede us”. And this “unprecedented transparency” compounds the possibility of doing both good and evil. For Seidman, this is all excellent news. Our new transparency makes going good much more effective, he told me, citing the example of doctors in Michigan whose public apology built a new trust with their patients.
But is Seidman really correct? Do we really want to live in an era in which our behavior can be scrutinized by anyone and one mistake can ruin our reputations forever?