Featured post by Jay Deragon from LinkToYourWorld.com

The great historian George Santana once said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”The history of social movements have demonstrated the human desire for independence while the “portals of power” have always tried to make people dependent on the power structures.

More and more people are becoming dependent on social networks for multiple purposes. These dependencies are flying in the face of the basic human desire for independence. Consider the resent Robert Scoble story about being banned from Facebook.

E-Week reports: Facebook on Jan. 3 reinstated Robert Scoble’s membership one day after banishing the high-tech blogger for testing a Plaxo tool that imports contact information from Facebook to the Plaxo Pulse service.

Facebook’s servers detected the automated script, which a representative told Scoble resembled the same type of script used to commit malicious attacks and send spam and shut the account down earlier Jan. 2.

Scoble promptly blogged about how he was cut off from his 5,000 Facebook friends, triggering an outcry from supporters in the blogosphere that is renewing the debate about who has the right to control data on a social network—its users or the network.

Facebook has very clear rules that the data on its network is under its purview; users would like to export their data to other social sites so they don’t have to re-enter data on multiple social networks. When Facebook banned Scoble, it provided a reason for users who want to control their data to reignite the fire.

While the historical conflict of dependence vs. independence has been between the people and the powers that govern the people there is now an evolving conflict between the people and the technology. The intersection of the matrix.

Doc Searls wrties: “Independence is a value that has run like a river, not just through the Open Source movement, but through the Independent Developer movement, the Free Software movement, and through hacker culture for the duration. Its origins are in value systems that recognize the transcendent virtues of personal freedom. Including the freedom of assembly that results in social groupings — especially those that are inherently elective. To be free is to opt in, not just out.”

“Scoble should be able to take his personal data, his social data, and his business, anywhere he likes. Our ability to associate and communicate and work out “social networking” should be independent of Facebook, LinkedIn, or any company’s walled garden.”

“The problem is, we have not framed what we want, and what we invent, sufficiently in terms of independence rather than dependence. We have not started with ourselves and worked outward and otherward from there. Instead we’ve waited for the Facebooks and Orkuts and Friendsters of the world to prototype our “social networks” for us. Which is fine, as far as it goes. But that’s like letting AT&T or Apple some other company contintue to define operating systems for us. With BSD and Linux we stopped doing that, and started making for ourselves.”

“We need to do the same with social networking. We can choose to serve as batteries in the Matrix that is Facebook (and every other “social network” that serves as a world-like habitat). Or we can choose to be free. That’s it.”

The battle between the people and the technology is just beginning. As Doc says, we can choose to depend on the matrix and thus become dependent or we can choose to be free. The choice is ours and if history repeats itself we’re in for a battle regardless of the choices we make.

Independence actually has a set of dependencies. The dependencies are at the conversational intersections between and among people. One to one to millions. The power of these dependencies is when the conversations become united and stand together on common principles that enable independence.

Facebook reinstated Robert Scoble’s membership because the people spoke up in swarms but did they change the rules of the matrix?

What say you?

www.relationship-economy.com

Jay Deragon

Online Storage of your companies files and reports are important because if you were to lose that information, you could retrieve it from the backup.

I have heard of companies that didn’t backup their files and when a crash happened, they lost everything. They lost customer files, partner files, internal reports, and a lot of other information that was important to their business.

In today’s world, it is relatively inexpensive to backup and store your business data. It’s almost like an insurance policy, something you don’t think you need until after the fact and then it costs you even more. At the very least, you should be doing some sort of data backup at least once a month. I personally prefer to backup data every day for my company. This may seem like a lot, but it allows my company to get back up and run smoothly when we’ve had a crash or security leak which we must resolve.

A company called iBackup provides online data backup and storage. They have a unique feature which allows you to store and access your backup data online as a mapped drive or folder just as you store and access your data on your own computer. This makes the interface easy to learn since it’s been developed like something you’re already accustomed with on your own computer. So you will be able to drag and drop data into the appropriate folders and you will be able to access just the same way.

You can test iBackup’s service through their free trial so you can become familiar with their layout and decide if it’s the right solution for your company. You may find that their desktop software outperforms other desktop software anywhere from 30%-50% and could lead to a lot of productivity gain within your organization.

Make sure you have your data protected, so you won’t be the one stressing out when a crash occurs.

If you’re like most companies, security is a top priority for your business. We live in a day and age that corporations and small businesses alike must keep a certain amount of secrecy to keep a competitive edge.

It was just last month that 2 Coke employees were sentence to prison for trying to sell company secrets to rival Pepsi. How much would it effect your business if employees sold proprietary information to your competitors? It may not take much to put your business under.

With the Internet and the way that digital documents can be filed, more and more companies are storing company data digitally on internal Intranets and on directories that can be accessed from outside locations via a password.

There are companies that can do online data monitoring to make sure your company’s files aren’t floating around the Internet for the entire public to see. If you want to make sure your company’s data is safe and secure, this is another method to protect that data.

webArgos is one of the leading providers of online data monitoring and protection. You can view their website at webArgos.com.

It only takes one bad or disgruntled employee to steal your information and sell it to the highest bidder. Especially in today’s world where knowledge is power, make sure you have your data and intellectual property protected.

On a recent Sunday, the Philadelphia Inquirer shocked our
local community by stating the obvious: “Even after the
carnage at an Amish school in Lancaster County last week, a
spot check by Inquirer reporters found a surprising number
of security lapses at schools across the region. In spite
of rules aimed at limiting public access, reporters who
fanned out on a single day walked into more than a dozen
schools unannounced and without being challenged.” Schools
Caught Short on Security, The Philadelphia Inquirer,
October 8, 2006

Many people think that security is the security manager’s
issue. However, on a recent blog post, I stated: “You can’t
rely on your employees and consultants to use common sense
when it comes to your company’s security. Remember to
continually communicate the boundaries of permission to
remind everyone that safety and security are team issues.”

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