The discussion of the role of Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites both in the recent protests across the Arab world and earlier in Iran has often seemed overblown. Similarly, the black-and-white put-downs written by skeptics are usually just as easily dismissed.

Communication is important during protest and rebellion. New and instantaneous modes of communicating seem sure to have altered the dynamics of protest and self-organisation. But how, and to what extent? While far too short for a full discussion of the topic, an article by Peter Beaumont for the Guardian, The truth about Twitter, Facebook and the uprisings in the Arab world, has some interesting research and perspectives on this subject.

Program or Be Programmed: 10 Commands for a Digital Age

And so here we are today, viewing the potential backwards: fetishizing the tools themselves and wondering how to advertise on and monetize from social networks, instead of putting humanity first, and focusing on how a connected society can open new possibilities for the way we work, create and exchange value, engage with one another, collaborate, and evolve socially and spiritually.

Several times in this space, I’ve spoken of the recklessness of the 100% mortgage and how it both shouldn’t have been offered to many of the people it was sold to and how those people should have had the sense not to take it.

A mortgage is in fact a very simple instrument, but it is often portrayed as a complex and unique financial proposition (at least as far as everyday finance goes). I think this bank- and media-fueled portrayal is a key reason why many people accepted mortgages they should not have done—they were blinded by the belief a mortgage was “too complicated” for non-financially savvy people such as themselves and so shirked their responsibility to understand and evaluate the risks.

XL Recordings, the record label that’s tearing up the rule book

With music booming out of speakers, posters splashed everywhere and offshoot indie label Young Turks beavering away on laptops, the XL office is a place that serves to remind you how dull your own place of work can be. How can people be having this much fun and make a success of it? No wonder they all seem so devoted to the XL cause. This, after all, is a label that is thriving in an industry that is supposed to be dying.

My broken record at the moment is privacy and the amount of control we have over data we publish about ourselves. My long default has been to publish everything to a public rather than private space—basically so it’s drop-dead simple to reason about who can see my stuff. I’m lazy and, frankly, I don’t think the stuff I write about is important enough to be kept “secret”.

And “secret” in scare-quotes is the right way to think about it. On balance, it’s probably best to think of anything you publish online as being “eventually public”, even if it’s currently restricted to a small group. Given the ease of copying data online, eventually it’s safe to assume that someone will copy data to outside your technological fencing.