We have become a generation of inspirational stamp collectors. With the proliferation of lightweight infographics posted on Pinterest and Facebook, we have outsourced the personal tweet and the status update.

We are present at a pivotal moment in the decline of modern civilization. The preeminence of these prepackaged ponderings is a step forward in our relentless march to illiteracy. Lightweight infographics are the SMS of critical thinking.

We have reached a point in our rhetorical inclinations where we have outsourced the tweet. We’ve gone from the hand-written letter to the email to the text message in less than 10 years. And now we have lost the desire to write 140 characters, or a few dozen words, of our own thoughts and post them for our friends to see. So instead we like, retweet, reblog, and repin the thoughts of others.

Maybe it’s not a function of time. Maybe we lack the confidence to stand behind our own thoughts, and must borrow them from other people who seem to be smarter, more credible, or more erudite than we are. With a few clicks we can either post or share something seemingly profound, or add a comment as we nod in knowing agreement, “It’s funny ’cause it’s true!”

Where do we go next? Enterprising Web 2.0 entrepreneurs have already launched sites where you can enter your own thoughts and automatically generate one of these graphics, so maybe there is a way to reintroduce original thinking back into the process.

Pinterest is the first step in automating the unoriginal thought curation process. Today, you have to go in and click “repin” to repost the things you like. Soon, we will have the option to have Pinterest, or a third-party add-on, automatically repin graphics, based on our profiles and repinning history, at pre-set intervals, so we don’t have to do a thing.

Tags: pinterest, repinnng, infographics, original, unoriginal, thoughts, outsourced tweets, automated curation

My ineffective protest against the infographic megameme that now pervades our every waking moment:

I surrender all copyright to this image, which I created. Post, reuse, steal freely.

Tags: dumb infographics

The latest social media kerfuffle is over news that some employers are requiring job candidates to disclose their social networking log-in credentials.  (Shel Israel does an excellent analysis and summary of the fine points of this story, so I won’t do that here).

Foregoing a discussion about why employers would need this information, this is the kind of silly, panic-inducing story journalists (online and offline) are in love with. It’s the latest in a string of opportunities to cry out with indignation, “Look what they’re doing to us now!” and to then step forward and announce “They’ve gone too far!” (Remember how foursquare was going to help burglars know when you’re gone?)

I’m a huge advocate for privacy. I’ve written and spoken about it often. And while this particular story is not worth getting one’s knickers in a knot over, the pure-anti-social-networking luddites are ignoring our time-honored tradition of surrendering privacy. To quote my friend Scott McNealy, former Sun Microsystems CEO, “You have no privacy. Get over it.” In other words, we gave away certain rights to privacy a long time ago.

We already give employers our social security number, our driver’s license or passport number, our address, and phone number. We agree to a credit check. If we sign up for direct deposit or arrange a wire transfer, we give out our checking account number and ABA routing number. Companies are tracking every keystroke you make and every IP address you visit while at work. Some jobs require employees to submit bodily fluids for drug testing.

If you want to work in aerospace, the intelligence community, or the U.S. Treasury, you can bet they’ll know everything about you from the name of your third-grade teacher to the average number of squares of toilet paper you use each time.

We trade in information. That’s not new and it’s not a function of social media. The great Facebook password disclosure debacle is a straw man enabling the time honored Luddite tradition of crying out, “Watch out for that social media!”

And if a company wants to know about me through what I post on Facebook, I have a solution I could certainly live with. Recruiters could have authenticated company-sponsored Facebook accounts and candidates could be asked to accept friend requests from these recruiters.

Tags: employers, employees, facebook, passwords, credentials, candidates, applicants, shel israel, facebook

Convenient that participants in the National Day of Unplugging could promote the importance of not letting technology take over their lives by tweeting about it, liking it on Facebook, sharing it on LinkedIn or posting it to Google+.

Tags: National Day of Unplugging

I was reminiscing about the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile (I had a scale model when I was a kid), so I did some exploring and found the company is (wisely) still making very active use of this iconic vehicle, which is so much a part of its brand.

Oscar-Mayer has brilliantly leveraged this cult classic as a brand asset and a gateway to its marketing programs. The company has the usual Facebook page and Twitter account, but it really takes excellent advantage of the appeal of the Wienermobile, which tours the country, meeting with local folks. The crew of the Wienermobile posts these experiences and photos to the Hotdogger Blog.

The company has a sense of humor, too, which is so critical to differentiating new marketing from old. (Popeye’s Chicken used to make off-color nugget jokes on its Twitter account.) Take for instance a recent blog post about keeping the Wienermobile tidy, titled: Cleaning Our Buns.

I really like what this company is doing to have fun with social media, to retain a classic brand but keep it fresh and appealing, and to engage with real people on a one-to-one basis, both on and off the web.

Tags: oscar mayer, wienermobile, brand, social media, hotdogger blog, twitter, facebook