Watching more, revealing less?

Monday, April 16, 2007 by Dave Winer.

Getting a late start today for some reason. Procrastinating about going across the bay to the Web 2.0 Expo. I have a dinner over there tonight, so I have to go at some time.  

This morning I watched Scoble drive to San Francisco and park his car, on his way to Moscone for the Expo. I talk with Scoble fairly often, so I know what it's like from my perspective, but today I found out what it's like from his. I didn't try the obvious thing of calling him while watching on Ustream, but others did. 

Last night I did my own Ustream show, called Bad Hair Day. I've wanted this for quite some time. I first wrote about it in the beginning of 2006, part of a series of feature requests for Yahoo. I wonder when Ustream came online? I first heard about it over the weekend. Over on Jeff Pulver's blog I read a comment from one of the founders saying that Twitter was instrumental in spreading the word about his service. Somewhere else I read someone wonder if Digg would respond to Twitter by becoming more real-time.  

One thing's for sure, with Twitter and then Justin.tv and now Ustream, our little corner of the web is becoming a lot faster and more intimate. People used to be shocked at how much I shared here on Scripting, now I look conservative.  

It wasn't very long ago that I thought Mike Arrington was daring for having TechCrunch parties at his house in Atherton. By today's standards, just a year or so later, it looks tame. 

A few weeks ago, when Justin.tv was raging, I said to Scoble that he would have to match him. I knew it wasn't for me. I like a clear line of delineation between my personal and public life.  

Waiting in line for coffee the other day Sylvia challenged me on this, asking if I had ever written about XXX (name X'd out), an old flame. I said nope never did. She asked about another girlfriend. Again, no. She said I write about my parents. True, but that's relatively new, and only very surface level stuff. I've found that if you want to have personal relationships, you have to keep them out of public view and be very careful about that.  

But we're entering a phase of the evolution of web culture where the parts of people's lives that are private are disappearing. It'll be interesting to watch. 

On the other hand, with everything online, where will the private stuff go, or will it just disappear. Surely Scoble will have to go to the men's room sometime today? He may not mind having everyone watch him take a leak, but how will the other people feel about that?? Can't wait to find out. Maybe only homeless, life-less people will be able to be online 24-7. 

However, Ustream is certainly the answer to how we'll webcast my session at Mix 07 on April 30, and all future conferences. Check one off the to-do lis.