Video now as dangerous as e-mail? - Blogs

E-mail has always been considered to be quite a reactive and dangerous medium for communication. How many times have we received an e-mail and find our knee jerk reaction to be suddenly flying into the the Sent folder? I know I'm guilty of sending a few e-mails I rather regret in my life.

Before e-mail we used this thing called the postal system, or the telephone. Why are these forms of communication so much better than e-mail? Well, for many reasons, but the 2 I feel most important are:

• Letters take time to write and in most cases require more thought, giving you time to consider what you are writing and what the consequences could be.
• Telephones allow you to hear what the other persons tone is like and likewise the person you speak to can hear your tone.

The majority of today's e-mails, certainly in the work environment, would more than likely been taken care of through a simple phone call, face-to-face or a post-it note stuck to your screen/desk. Arguments would have been done and dusted in the blink of an eye, or even defused before they started.

There have been many cases of people losing their jobs due to e-mails that have been posted over the years:

• Reporter Fired for Mistakenly Sending a Vulgar and Insensitive Email to P.R. Firm
• Dirty old man out to pasture
• Civil servant sacked for critical email

You can understand all of the above stories, and there are many more that rage from the obvious of sending porn via your works email, to basting the boss passing them up on a promotion. The point is, without e-mail the majority of case would not happen.

So, what's my point and why does this have anything to me watching a talk by youTube? The answer, the mention of the new wave of video mobile phones that can take a video and put it up to youTube without any effort. Yes, people have been doing this for years, but it has always taken a bit of effort (a bit like using e-mail 10years ago). My concern is that the videos are going to start flooding up onto youTube without any consideration of consequence. Don't get me wrong, I am full aware that it is already happening and many of the video blogs that are up there are un-thought out and would cause you concern.

The problem I have now, is that I have opened a can of worms that covers something else that I'm working on about how "openly social" we are and how dangerous this is becoming. I'm sure it'll be something to bore you with soon enough, but for now I shall leave you with the following article:

Girl sacked for Facebook slur

(Comments and discussion welcome, as that's the point ;-D)