Open Publication
I acknowledge I heavily invested in using technology to capture and disaggregate content across the web, engaging with others around their reactions to my prolific outpourings across the web. It seemed not only natural to document my learning journey using all manner and means of platforms and services, but also to embrace the Internet as the vehicle with which to disaggregate my findings, connect with others and grow my knowledge.
The idea that the internet existed yet we had to lock everything away from view seemed absurd and I have been prolifically documenting everything in my daily life and as my photo feed shows I soon had amassed teens of thousands of images online and many, many disgruntled subjects complaining of my complete disregard for their wishes not to be published on the internet. By late 2010 I know I was acting like a complete sociopath and likewise I was soon being treated like one. It was a feeling of freedom yet I was encountering a great deal of dissent especially from cultural groups whose very spiritual connections prohibit images and even the presence of others depending on their cultural family structures.
“… Life began taking new form as I careened across skies in aeroplanes peering into trayback flight advertising and pretending I was in superstar nirvana. The onset of the mobile web social networking only further compounded that insecurity as I posted prolifically to Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter.
It is amongst this shift to that of the researcher role that I also noted a deeper sense of listening with purpose to others, not simply engaging in activities that met project milestones or key deliverables.
“… In retrospect I felt at times deeply alienated as a I sought to engage with a technologically focussed activity then returning and reflecting upon what that activity meant if applied to a differing array of stakeholders. I think it was the dawn of consideration where the public and the differing points of power lay in the control of that experience.
Deep down I've known all along that there are Romanian psychopaths sucking up my data and creating their own alias of 'Alexander Hayes' or any number of analysts building my surveillance file in ASIO but I think in the end my defence will be that I am visible, defensible and above all a pretty average human.
