The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet: ”

When I was last in DC, I had lunch with Daniel Solove and we were talking about book publishing. He had been thinking of making his book downloadable under Creative Commons and I was like DO IT DO IT! This is the kind of book that is sooo relevant so many different audiences who would never hear about it through traditional advertising. My thought is that if it were available online, it could whet folks appetite before buying it (cuz printing it out is painful and reading it online is not wonderful either and your Kindle doesn’t support PDFs). Introducing…

This book examines the darker side of personal expression and communication online, looking at some of the social costs of what I’m always rambling on about as ‘persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences.’ Our reputation is one of our greatest assets. What happens when our own acts or the acts of others sully that? What role does the technology play in enabling or stopping that? How should the law modernize its approach to privacy and slander to address the networked world?

While this book is written by a professor, it’s written in extremely accessible manner and should be devoured by parents, marketers, technologists, teachers, HR professionals, policy makers, and anyone else who might have a stake in the world of reputation. I also found excerpts helpful for students who are trying to make sense of the costs of their practices. Oh, and it’s a fun read.

If you hate reading from the screen, just go and buy the book. The author and his publisher will thank you.

(Oh, and go Yale University Press! You’re batting well in the CC/open-access publishing baseball game!)

reputation book
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(Via apophenia.)