Location sharing: Curse or a blessing?

Having travelled through 3 Asian countries in the last week , I’m amazed at the amount of people now participating on location based social networks. The stats still show that it is a small minority of overall social network users, however usage is growing at an increasingly faster rate.

When i travel, whether it’s business or pleasure, I always try my best to find hidden little alleyways and cafes outside the reach of mainstream tourists. To my surprise, upon doing exactly that in numerous locations over the past week, i was shocked to find that the majority of places i went to, no matter how obscure, had someone “check-in” already on either Foursquare, FB places, or Gowalla. Some even leaving quite useful tips such as local lingo to get a better deal or portion of satay.

Do I like this increased connectivity and ability to find a community wherever i go? Yes and no. The benefits are obvious to those of us that live and breathe social media, however I’ve been pondering on this quite a bit lately and am seriously considering abandoning location based participation or significantly limiting it to a specific purpose (e.g. for international travel or only when I have a tip to share).

Those of you that know me personally, also know that i love to get away once in a while and “disconnect”. I enjoy being off the grid as it allows for introspection. And yet, now that i’ve started experimenting with location based services, i find that instead of relaxing at a new location and enjoying its seclusion, I’m frantically searching for a wireless signal to be able to share it with others, as if I was in a race. It has become second nature, just like checking emails, sms, facebook, etc…has for so many of us.

We need to slow down.

One of the best books I’ve read in a while is called “Hamlet’s Blackberry” by William Powers. The author looks into the past at various disruptive technologies throughout civilization to see how they affected society from a socio-cultural context. My favourite example is that of Socrates and his distaste of the written word, which was a quickly growing disruptive medium in Greek society at the time that threatened public orators and all face to face interaction. Sound familiar? Of course it does. History more than repeats itself, sometimes it’s almost a mirror image. I’ll let you read the book.

Back to location based social networks. I’m experimenting. I may change my mind down the road, however for now i think i may just start limiting what i share in terms of location. Not out of a fear of privacy, the “why would anyone care” question, or the usual slew of reasons. I get the benefits, i understand the nature of community and building social capital, which i actively do on various other social media channels. However, at one point we need to draw the line before we completely lose the ability to self reflect and be “in the moment” on our own as individuals. There is nothing wrong with that.

Ironically, I am sitting outside at a Starbucks in Kuala Lumpur’s China Town on Petaling Street (solely because it has the best wi-fi) writing this post on my iPad. And yes, I did just check-in.

To be continued as I keep experimenting…