I don't think it's going to end up people changing and being more careful about their personal lives and how they are reflected on the Internet, so much as the career world (or whathaveyou) loosening up a bit and realizing that not only is corporate data, copyrighted material, and useful information more easily distributed these days, but so is the sharing of our interests and lives outside of work.

Sure, we can sometimes be damned for those lives outside of work (who hasn't been a dumbass at some point? likewise who hasn't been proud of a dumbass moment or at least told that dumbass moment as a story?), but I don't think that is going to stop culture from churning away and consuming technology and the crazy efficient way information is disseminated.

It's just part of a dramatically changing cultural shift that I don't think we'll realize for another 50 years just how dramatic it has been, this efficient exchange of info.

Sure, people can be a little more careful about how they present themselves, but in the long run I think that will overrun and swamp any feeling of disdain that such hooligans may be in positions of power or influence or just some career job.

Lonervamp, thanks for your note. You highlight some good points.

What I have seen consistently throughout organizations within the CxO levels is that they do not realize how information within their organizations is proliferated and scattered; not only in "crazy efficient way", but, what should be of more concern to them, in crazily uncoordinated and uncontrolled ways.

Organizations have, to date, been reacting to information they find on the Internet...about their companies, employees, job applicants, etc... in a knee-jerk type of reaction. Business leaders need to wake up to the cultural and technological changes around them, think, and create some realistic, clearly documented and communicated policies to address distributing information, as well as how to react to information found on the Internet. If they do not, they will continue to handle these types of situations ad hoc and inconsistently, not only having a negative impact on their own organizations and opening themselves up to potential lawsuits, but also negatively impacting the individuals involved.

Yes, this is a dramatic and excelerated cultural shift that we are in the midst of. It is exciting and constantly amazing. However, accompanying this quickly changing culture, and more efficiency, there is also great inefficiency and access created; a vast amount of impacts on individuals and organizations that comes with the also accompanying uncontrolled flight of stealth information into the etherworld in more forms than we even can imagine right now...but much of that information will be discovered, interpreted and used in ways that the people who pressed the enter key never even imagined.

Yes, people need to be more careful and think before posting information or reacting to what they think they see...everyone from the executive levels in business all the way through to the schools where students are preparing for their careers while at the same time having some fun and frolic in their private times...that they often then choose to make public without understanding the potential long term impacts.