Back when the commercial internet first started to take off it was uncommon to use your real name online. Instead people relied on usernames and other pseudynoms to represent themselves. I honestly can’t remember what I used in those days, but I’m sure it was something ridiculous.
Over time though that started to change.
Blogging started to take off in the late 1990s. And we started to become more comfortable sharing personal information online. Perhaps the biggest shift though, came with the introduction of Facebook in 2004 (over 10 years ago!). All of a sudden people – young college students initially – started sharing lots of personal information online, including photos of themsleves and their friends.
But this wasn’t an overnight change. When Facebook first launched, privacy was an important component. It still is, but I would argue that it has become less central given how public a lot of other social media platforms are today. Twitter, for instance, is what it is today largely because of its publicness.
For my own social media accounts, I have made every single one of them completely public. From Twitter to Facebook to
Back when the commercial internet first started to take off it was uncommon to use your real name online. Instead people relied on usernames and other pseudynoms to represent themselves. I honestly can’t remember what I used in those days, but I’m sure it was something ridiculous.
Over time though that started to change.
Blogging started to take off in the late 1990s. And we started to become more comfortable sharing personal information online. Perhaps the biggest shift though, came with the introduction of Facebook in 2004 (over 10 years ago!). All of a sudden people – young college students initially – started sharing lots of personal information online, including photos of themsleves and their friends.
But this wasn’t an overnight change. When Facebook first launched, privacy was an important component. It still is, but I would argue that it has become less central given how public a lot of other social media platforms are today. Twitter, for instance, is what it is today largely because of its publicness.
For my own social media accounts, I have made every single one of them completely public. From Twitter to Facebook to
Instagram
to Snapchat, nothing I post to social media is restricted in any way. And I do that because I believe we are headed towards a world with more – not less – openness, transparency and publicness.
Of course, I’m not just talking about social media and tech. I’m talking about open data in general.
For those of you not from familiar with the Toronto real estate market, historical sales data for homes is not open and published online. You generally need to go through a realtor to get access to this data. Some think this is the right approach. And others think it is antiquated.
But as I explained above, our conception of what should be private can, and will, evolve over time.
Here are the details on my home:
I purchased it in September 2012 for exactly $400,000 (Canadian). It’s a 650 square foot condo in the St. Lawrence Market neighborhood of Toronto. It has one bedroom, a 400 square foot terrace, one parking spot, and 10′ ceilings.
Sooner or later, I believe this information will be freely available online. But since that’s not the case today, I figured I would just tell you. Sharing this information is not a big deal for me.
The post is about why he believes that Walmart could get the “most disrupted by the Internet.” And it has to do with the rapid rise of same day and even same hour delivery from ecommerce companies. If you can order it online and receive it within an hour, why bother going to a brick-and-mortar store?
His post reminded me of one I wrote towards the end of last year called, The threat to big box retailing. But since Fred is in the business of making bets on technology companies and he has accumulated a significant amount of wealth doing that, I thought you might like to also hear it from him.
Amy Bath needs to leave comments here on ATC more often because she has great feedback and insights.
This morning she tipped me off to a brand new co-working space on the east side of Toronto called East Room. If you haven’t yet heard of it, I would encourage you to check out their website. They’re in a gorgeous heritage building along the Don Valley and they seem to have executed really well. I love their design aesthetic.
They currently offer two different memberships: a resident membership ($500/month) and a club membership ($250/month).
This is exciting to me because I have a soft spot for both good design and the east side of Toronto. But probably more importantly, it speaks to the changing nature of work and the workplace, as well as to the shifts in how space is being consumed.
Co-working spaces are, of course, blowing up all over the world from Philadelphia to Berlin. The internet has empowered new ways to freelance and make money, and these kinds of spaces are really a result of that. Because even though it’s entirely possible for many of us to work remotely at home, we still crave the social interaction that comes from being within an office environment. And that’s a big part of what these spaces are. They’re a social fabric.
Amy’s hope is that condos will eventually start including amenity spaces that are similar to co-working spaces, and I think that’s a really interesting idea. The challenge, however, is that most developers today (and property managers) aren’t equipped to operate these kinds of environments.
But maybe it’s only a matter of time before some do become equipped, because I’m sure we’re going to see more, not less, of these kinds of urban spaces.
to Snapchat, nothing I post to social media is restricted in any way. And I do that because I believe we are headed towards a world with more – not less – openness, transparency and publicness.
Of course, I’m not just talking about social media and tech. I’m talking about open data in general.
For those of you not from familiar with the Toronto real estate market, historical sales data for homes is not open and published online. You generally need to go through a realtor to get access to this data. Some think this is the right approach. And others think it is antiquated.
But as I explained above, our conception of what should be private can, and will, evolve over time.
Here are the details on my home:
I purchased it in September 2012 for exactly $400,000 (Canadian). It’s a 650 square foot condo in the St. Lawrence Market neighborhood of Toronto. It has one bedroom, a 400 square foot terrace, one parking spot, and 10′ ceilings.
Sooner or later, I believe this information will be freely available online. But since that’s not the case today, I figured I would just tell you. Sharing this information is not a big deal for me.
The post is about why he believes that Walmart could get the “most disrupted by the Internet.” And it has to do with the rapid rise of same day and even same hour delivery from ecommerce companies. If you can order it online and receive it within an hour, why bother going to a brick-and-mortar store?
His post reminded me of one I wrote towards the end of last year called, The threat to big box retailing. But since Fred is in the business of making bets on technology companies and he has accumulated a significant amount of wealth doing that, I thought you might like to also hear it from him.
Amy Bath needs to leave comments here on ATC more often because she has great feedback and insights.
This morning she tipped me off to a brand new co-working space on the east side of Toronto called East Room. If you haven’t yet heard of it, I would encourage you to check out their website. They’re in a gorgeous heritage building along the Don Valley and they seem to have executed really well. I love their design aesthetic.
They currently offer two different memberships: a resident membership ($500/month) and a club membership ($250/month).
This is exciting to me because I have a soft spot for both good design and the east side of Toronto. But probably more importantly, it speaks to the changing nature of work and the workplace, as well as to the shifts in how space is being consumed.
Co-working spaces are, of course, blowing up all over the world from Philadelphia to Berlin. The internet has empowered new ways to freelance and make money, and these kinds of spaces are really a result of that. Because even though it’s entirely possible for many of us to work remotely at home, we still crave the social interaction that comes from being within an office environment. And that’s a big part of what these spaces are. They’re a social fabric.
Amy’s hope is that condos will eventually start including amenity spaces that are similar to co-working spaces, and I think that’s a really interesting idea. The challenge, however, is that most developers today (and property managers) aren’t equipped to operate these kinds of environments.
But maybe it’s only a matter of time before some do become equipped, because I’m sure we’re going to see more, not less, of these kinds of urban spaces.
