Sharing Information

Death! We all die and when that happens we cannot take anything with us. I have been pondering these thoughts recently as a clean out my Mom's house and finally get to reviewing many of my fathers files (he died over 10 years ago). My father was a very private man - he shared thoughts and ideas very tentatively, always worried someone would take them. He developed some incredible theories on business cycles (see enginesofprosperity.com which he never published). I now have about 40 boxes of his research on the history of the stock market and don't know what to do with them. Because he didn't share his work with anyone, there is no one who can carry on his work and finish it.

So what is the purpose of not sharing ideas? If we keep things close to us we aren't able to bounce them off of other people and get input. We aren't able to be introduce to others with a similar passion who we could collaborate with. If we don't share, when we die one of two things will happen: either our work will be destroyed - since no one knows enough to save it or our work will provide torment to our children - they want to preserve our legacy, but at the same time they don't know what to do with what we created.

If we do share what are we risking. Someone can miss-understand, miss-quote what we are talking about or take it out of context and manipulate our words. Or worse someone can steal what we have done and claim it as their own. However, I have come to see these as excuses and the biggest reason people don't share is the risk of being exposed and the fear of critique - you cannot get "hurt" if you never share anything.

Technology is profoundly effecting this equation of when and how to share. Technology today makes connecting with other people who hold similar passions much easier. It allows us to share ideas and have them credited to us in ways that were hard to do previously. Technology is changing the equation for sharing so that it is more heavily favoring being open.

It doesn't come naturally for me to share due to my upbringing. But the more I consider the alternatives, the more I push myself to share. I continually say what is the worst thing that can happen - after realizing that this isn't that bad I go ahead and share.

Mankind is becoming increasingly open and more and more people are realizing that sharing is much more powerful than not sharing - just look at Facebook and Twitter. This sharing will propel the next growth of knowledge. Our future is incredible. We are truly on the verge of the Coming Digital Age.