I have been listening to an audio tape of the book The World Is Flat for a global technology class I teach. The author, Thomas Friedman, talks about the effect that google and other search engines have on our personal lives. Friedman cautions the listener to “Be Good.”

Live your life honestly, because whatever you do, whatever mistakes you make, will be searchable one day.

More and more of our online actions, our personal information, and our histories are finding their way into the public domain. So, at least out of fear of the world discovering your hidden actions, don’t do anything that you would feel shameful about if other people knew.

Yet we must, at some point, transcend from acting out of fear, to acting properly because it is a natural habit. Do we do the right thing regardless of who might see our actions? When we can live our lives like an open book with no shame, we will be living truly free and bright lives.

The people with the brightest lives become more brilliant the deeper we look into them. Yet we must start from somewhere. So if Freidman’s warning may be of some insight or encouragement, I hope it helps.