There has been a lot of buzz over the past week regarding the release of the Mitchell Report - Senator George Mitchell's look into baseball's nasty smear, performance enhancing drugs. Assuming you don't live in a mountainside hermit shack, you've probably heard some of the talk surrounding the document, even if baseball isnt quite your thing. If you're looking for more info than that, Wikipedia can skim the surface, and the report itself... can give you... itself.
As professional sports seasons wind down, I often find myself reflecting on the number of players that step away from their various professions. I suppose its some sort of twisted ritual by which I measure my own age. Every year, a few more players retire and every year, the number of people who have been playing since I was a wee Stub drops like a drawn out, depressing New Years Eve countdown. I guess its the side effect of being such a rabid sports nut. I'm a far bigger football fan than anything else, but I pay attention to all of the big American sports, and to varying degrees, the Stubsian sports hour glass applies to all of them.
Roger Clemens is one of the few throwback players left from my formative years. He's been pitching since I was 2, and that longevity coupled with his skill has pretty well embedded his name into that category of people I consider synonymous with a sport. He isnt a boyhood idol or anything, and truth be told, outside of being a Yankee fan, I don't have a whole lot of interest in him. But he is a name - a name that has played baseball at a very high level for as long as I can remember. A name I recognize and remember from a time when sports were simple. They might not have been any more pure than they are today - but I was young in "the good old days", and not tuned in enough to know about the negatives. There was a purity in that youthful ignorance and I, as I suspect most people do, miss it from time to time.
But in addition to being a link to my past, Roger Clemens has also been named as a heavy user of performance enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report. Clemens was not the only player named (there were nearly 100 people in total). And though the evidence against most would likely not stand up in a court, the release of the report has led to multiple confessions, lending some credence to what initially looked like shaky findings. Clemens, for his part, vehemently denies any claims that he has ever used any sort of performance drug.
So what does any of this have to do with any of my normal topics? I suppose its forced me to ask the question, how much do I really want to know? And not just about athletes, but about anyone? And from there we make the jump to social networking...
I have been fortunate, in so much as despite the large number of my friends who are involved in social networking or the internet at large, I've never had a moment of negative zen. The miracles of modern technology have afford me countless opportunities to learn about friends or colleagues, and offered them the same opportunities to allow them to learn about me. But, as of yet, I've never had to deal with that technology casting a dark shadow over itself. I've never been unlucky enough to discover something really awful about someone I know. But what if it did?
For the most part, I try not to judge people for the content on their myspace page, for the pictures they post to Flick'r, for the links they save to del.icio.us, for the ideas they share in their blogs or for the tweets they fire off on twitter. The way I see it, social technologies have afforded me an enormous opportunity to learn and share that I would otherwise not have had. And if I decide to judge, that door might one day close on me. It doesnt mean I agree with, or understand some of the choices people make, but by and large I'll accept them and be thankful for the opportunity to learn a little more about someone. Besides - I'm not exactly your run of the mill normal dude anyway =)
But I've never opened up Flick'r to find a picture of a family member wearing a KKK uniform or swastikas. I've never seen tweets that give me reason to believe that a co-worker might be racist, sexist, homophobic or religiously prejudiced. I've never seen blog posts from friends that talk about the way they cheated their way through school, or alluding to the fact that they beat their children. Those are all extreme examples, but even lesser ones beg the question, what would I do? My judgment free social technology world would crumble into a billion pieces. But where is that imaginary line between worthy of judgment and not?
In response to Facebook's social advertising endevour - Beacon - I had written a post essentially asking if anyone cared if their friends knew what they were buying on the internet. I find myself returning to that question again, but in a much broader sense.
We all have secrets - those skeletons we would prefer stay in our closets. The reasons we keep them are as diverse as the secrets themselves. Pride. Embarrassment. Fear. Power. Security. Self preservation. But what if all those secrets were out in the open? What would happen if none of us had any privacy at all? What would happen if all of us knew everything about each-other? Would people think less of you? Would you lose any friends? Would your professional life suffer? Would anything change in your family? If you could peer into anyone's closest, would you like what you saw? Would you even care?
The significance on the Mitchell Report really has nothing to do with baseball to me. Instead, its forced me to ask, how much I really want to know. How much ignorance would I trade for bliss?
I love social networking. I love the internet. I love web 2.0. So don't let this post fool you - I'm not planning on changing the way I roll. But as these technologies progress... as more and more of our lives are exposed to each other, it does beg wondering if there is a point that goes too far?
I don't support cheating. So if it turns out that Clemens juiced in a way that went against Baseball's rules, then I hope he is punished for his actions.
Though I for one, was happier not knowing.
Image from soxblog.mlblogs.com
As professional sports seasons wind down, I often find myself reflecting on the number of players that step away from their various professions. I suppose its some sort of twisted ritual by which I measure my own age. Every year, a few more players retire and every year, the number of people who have been playing since I was a wee Stub drops like a drawn out, depressing New Years Eve countdown. I guess its the side effect of being such a rabid sports nut. I'm a far bigger football fan than anything else, but I pay attention to all of the big American sports, and to varying degrees, the Stubsian sports hour glass applies to all of them.
Roger Clemens is one of the few throwback players left from my formative years. He's been pitching since I was 2, and that longevity coupled with his skill has pretty well embedded his name into that category of people I consider synonymous with a sport. He isnt a boyhood idol or anything, and truth be told, outside of being a Yankee fan, I don't have a whole lot of interest in him. But he is a name - a name that has played baseball at a very high level for as long as I can remember. A name I recognize and remember from a time when sports were simple. They might not have been any more pure than they are today - but I was young in "the good old days", and not tuned in enough to know about the negatives. There was a purity in that youthful ignorance and I, as I suspect most people do, miss it from time to time. But in addition to being a link to my past, Roger Clemens has also been named as a heavy user of performance enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report. Clemens was not the only player named (there were nearly 100 people in total). And though the evidence against most would likely not stand up in a court, the release of the report has led to multiple confessions, lending some credence to what initially looked like shaky findings. Clemens, for his part, vehemently denies any claims that he has ever used any sort of performance drug.
So what does any of this have to do with any of my normal topics? I suppose its forced me to ask the question, how much do I really want to know? And not just about athletes, but about anyone? And from there we make the jump to social networking...
I have been fortunate, in so much as despite the large number of my friends who are involved in social networking or the internet at large, I've never had a moment of negative zen. The miracles of modern technology have afford me countless opportunities to learn about friends or colleagues, and offered them the same opportunities to allow them to learn about me. But, as of yet, I've never had to deal with that technology casting a dark shadow over itself. I've never been unlucky enough to discover something really awful about someone I know. But what if it did?
For the most part, I try not to judge people for the content on their myspace page, for the pictures they post to Flick'r, for the links they save to del.icio.us, for the ideas they share in their blogs or for the tweets they fire off on twitter. The way I see it, social technologies have afforded me an enormous opportunity to learn and share that I would otherwise not have had. And if I decide to judge, that door might one day close on me. It doesnt mean I agree with, or understand some of the choices people make, but by and large I'll accept them and be thankful for the opportunity to learn a little more about someone. Besides - I'm not exactly your run of the mill normal dude anyway =)
But I've never opened up Flick'r to find a picture of a family member wearing a KKK uniform or swastikas. I've never seen tweets that give me reason to believe that a co-worker might be racist, sexist, homophobic or religiously prejudiced. I've never seen blog posts from friends that talk about the way they cheated their way through school, or alluding to the fact that they beat their children. Those are all extreme examples, but even lesser ones beg the question, what would I do? My judgment free social technology world would crumble into a billion pieces. But where is that imaginary line between worthy of judgment and not?
In response to Facebook's social advertising endevour - Beacon - I had written a post essentially asking if anyone cared if their friends knew what they were buying on the internet. I find myself returning to that question again, but in a much broader sense.
We all have secrets - those skeletons we would prefer stay in our closets. The reasons we keep them are as diverse as the secrets themselves. Pride. Embarrassment. Fear. Power. Security. Self preservation. But what if all those secrets were out in the open? What would happen if none of us had any privacy at all? What would happen if all of us knew everything about each-other? Would people think less of you? Would you lose any friends? Would your professional life suffer? Would anything change in your family? If you could peer into anyone's closest, would you like what you saw? Would you even care?
The significance on the Mitchell Report really has nothing to do with baseball to me. Instead, its forced me to ask, how much I really want to know. How much ignorance would I trade for bliss?
I love social networking. I love the internet. I love web 2.0. So don't let this post fool you - I'm not planning on changing the way I roll. But as these technologies progress... as more and more of our lives are exposed to each other, it does beg wondering if there is a point that goes too far?
I don't support cheating. So if it turns out that Clemens juiced in a way that went against Baseball's rules, then I hope he is punished for his actions.
Though I for one, was happier not knowing.
Image from soxblog.mlblogs.com
Leave a comment