Wisdom 2.0 Conference

Wisdom 2.0 Conference Tech Panel: Consciousness in a Constantly Connected Life (from left to right): Wisdom 2 founder and panel moderator Soren Gordhamer, Zen Teacher Roshi Joan Halifax, Digg Founder Kevin Rose, Zynga Co-Founder Eric Schiermeyer, Twitter Strategic Advisor Chris Sacca, and Google VP Bradley Horowitz

“Somebody’s an asshole in real life, and they’re going to be an asshole online.

You can’t fake it.”

Chris Sacca, investor and Strategic Advisor for Twitter began his final words on a tech panel on Consciousness in a Constantly Connected Life at the Wisdom 2.0 Conference yesterday pondering that first statement posed to the panel.

With the backdrop of 2,000 years of computing on display at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif, Sacca explained, “The more these platforms are built and the more transparency and authenticity emerges, the more people fact check you and security check you and truth check you, either you’re so good at faking it, and you become that thing, or you’re just exposed.”

This evolution toward authenticity was echoed at SFNewTech’s Social Data Revolution panel two nights earlier in San Francisco.

 sfnewtech - social data revolution #socialdata

SFNewTech - Social Data Revolution (from left to right): SimpleGeo's Joe Stump, Skout's Christian Wiklund, Presdo & LinkedIn Founder Eric Ly, Hummer Winblad's Lars Leckie, Wikinvest's Michael Sha, and former Amazon Chief Scientist Andreas Weigend

“You can no longer be a closet asshole and be a nice guy when you first meet people because if you are an asshole somebody’s going to take a picture of you spitting on the homeless guy,” Joe Stump Co-Founder of SimpleGEO and former Lead Architect at Digg said to the SFNewTech audience.

“I just read this last night: there was a txt from a student who said I held a professor’s hair back while she was puking, if she doesn’t give me an A on the exam, I’m going to be posting the pictures all over Facebook.

“We have to be our true selves. We can no longer have multiple versions of ourselves, and I think that’s going to be a drastic shift in human behavior over the next 5–10 years.

“You cannot hide who you really are, and I think that is scary for some people. You have to be who you are and accept that and move on.”

As a CEO, I’ve found it nearly impossible to have a separate business and personal persona. To effectively engage, motivate and collaborate with the team @mojointeractive, I believe connecting with them on Facebook, Yammer and Twitter all help us align our core values.

I’m a better leader, facilitator and collaborator when I understand what my colleagues value. When, for instance, someone posts about completing a half marathon on Facebook and then posts on Yammer of a milestone on a big company project that affects us all, there is a strengthening of empathy and trust, cornerstone emotions for accountability to each other.

A single persona of authenticity signals to those around me that my values are consistent across my life and if you like what you see, what can we collaborate on so we can build something great?

Between the balance of presence and mindfulness with the always now, instant feedback, data streaming social data revolution, the questions being asked at these two conferences are some of the most fascinating being discussed on our connection with technology.

A powerful moment is taken when reflection on your authenticity and your relationship with technology is considered.