For the first time in a long time, I didn’t hit the ‘record’ button on the videoconferencing software. As a result, the conversation I would have turned into a podcast episode was not recorded.

And yet, the person I was talking to and I both acted like it was being recorded. We behaved as if the cloud were absorbing our thoughts. We watched our words, monitored our tone, made our points, and when we disagreed, did so respectfully.

Did we already have great behavior, or was our tendency to be respectful with each other mediated, informed, and censored by the fact that we believed the interaction was going to be part of posterity?

At least temporarily on the Internet.

The tools that monitor and record us are changing our behavior as much as we are molding the tools to work with us. It’s a symbiotic relationship rather than a dictatorial posture, no matter what the marketing folks who work for the technologists would want you to believe.