As a species, we crave knowledge & connection.

“We live in public,” asserted my one of my new friends just as I and my mojito sat down to join them. A fitting starter: I had met one of them right here on my own blog.

I haven’t always been the type to wear my heart on my sleeve so publicly. For most of my life, in fact, I did the exact opposite; I tightly protected my feelings and kept them hidden from everyone – family, friends, enemies – except in extreme circumstances where something (or someone) pushed me past my limits. And then all that energy would be released in a furious storm.

I wrote – even in my early journals, I kept my distance more often than not, but they were my only outlet for much of my youth. And as I grew older, I allowed certain people into certain parts of my life, but kept them apart from others. This, my compartmentalized, segmented life, stayed with me until only a few years ago. But along the way, I started to share what I wrote online.

And now, perhaps, I share more than enough to test those boundaries of public and private – I express things that we’re often expected to share only with our trusted friends. I’ve gotten used to living an exposed life, I’ve seen my search results on Google, dating all the way back into the 90s.

So last year, when another friend of mine expressed concern that everybody could see what she was doing on Facebook — “it’s like I’m being watched,” — at first I didn’t understand. After all, we choose to interact in a space that mixes public and private in new ways, we choose to tell our friends what’s going on, we choose to write wall posts and comment on things, we revel in being able to share our lives so easily with our friends.

But then another of my new friends joined in – after I mentioned ’it’s like being watched’ sharing the same feeling. They all affirmed this. People are watching.

Not only do we enjoy sharing ourselves so openly, but we delight in our new voyeuristic ability to know what’s going on with our circle of friends at a level not previously possible without physical proximity.

So I notice myself doing it – I realized a while ago that I was never so fascinated by the everyday lives of the people around me before the age of Twitter and Facebook. It’s an addiction to feeling connected to each other, to feeling like a part of a whole, and by sharing, responding, and interacting with each other we identify more strongly with our peers.

Still, I’m in this crossover generation that didn’t start using the Internet (other than eWorld and AOL and BBSes) until we reached college. We remember – some of us until much more recently than others – a time when catching up was something you did over the phone or by letter – or even by email!

Now, more often than not, our friends know at least the basics of what’s going on in our lives almost all the time. To someone long-used to having privacy in her actions by the very fact that they were not exposed in a public forum, that can be startling and at times… disturbing.

As a species, we crave knowledge & connection. As the flow and volume of information into our lives increases, so seems to grow our hunger for more of both.

We live in public, most of us, choosing to share our lives more intimately with others than we ever have before; and our interest in each other’s lives has increased exponentially, too.

If living in public teaches us to express ourselves openly and honestly, if it allows us to create strong bonds between ourselves and others who feel affinity with each other’s public selves, then I believe it’s a good thing. But if it frightens us, alienates us, causes us to shrink back and play out as someone we are not, perhaps we need to reevaluate the wisdom of living out here in such a wide open space.

I’m not sure I can turn back now, though.