The Far Reaches of Digital Footprints!

On my way heading back to London from Dubai, after a pleasant break spent a week earlier in Sri Lanka, I was reflecting on the parallel between ‘Frequent Flying’ & ‘Digital Footprint’! Somehow, these two common states of the global 21^st century seemed so interconnected in speed, delivery and relevance.

Since the last century, travelling around the world has become more of a necessity for some and a widely accessible activity for many. With congested air traffic, increased airport flights, and the ease with which flying across borders to different countries has become very much the norm for many.

Indeed, these have become a way of life for business executives, jetting from one meeting to another, following up on business, networking on regional and global levels. Commuting from home to work, or taking the bus, tube or car just to do your weekly groceries, have lost their appeal in an overcrowded, overstressed, overhyped public world where people compete in the race of life, even to get ahead in the public bus or tube platform for the coveted vacant seat!

Time is of the essence, and those who have had long days of exposure, along plenty of practice manoeuvring to ensure one is actually just behind the yellow line ahead of others!

Minding the gap is in fact exactly what most adapt do when avoiding long waiting queues, making smart strategies zooming in and out on any line to be at the very front. Be it, finalizing boarding formalities, making an order, ensuring a reservation, or simply paying the cash counter or till before anyone else, in order not to be delayed, or perhaps even gain some time for the next best thing: Making time to eat, love, and even meditate…if not pray! J

For eons these have always been done physically as one needed to have to (DIY) do-it-yourself, get physically active, get out and about, do what it takes to hit the road, get the goods, buy the product, receive the service, or manage to use all the PR face-to-face techniques, to simply be networking and trading for the success of ones industry and business, and secure all our treasured ends do meet! 

These are what experts call our ‘track record’! Tracing our mark from the early days in school and high school, into well after graduation, laying the grounds of our life span and social scene. Our personal lifeline and professional trajectory, rising in the horizon, showing spikes on average, and some steep dips at times. Analysing the outcome left behind seems to be a prerogative of others, deemed more specialists, and therefore, true connoisseurs to forecast your true value!

With the new millennium, evaluation criteria have not only changed, but truly evolved. Many industries, businesses, and people as professionals have simply burst into life on a different kind of activities and achievements as footprints!

The Internet has reduced the universe into grids and pixels; specs and widgets. Along planets, satellites and galaxies, the digital world has engulfed the universe! The Internet is ruling the world…It has brought life to many, right at their front doors and into their living rooms!

In the virtual world, our ‘Track Record’ has turned into our ‘Digital Footprint’. People don’t need to run, fight for one’s space, and appropriate one’s due seat! Here space is infinite, and boundaries are limitless! Claiming ownership is not a problem when ‘space’ is all the same, immensely infinite and dark, made freely available to set up our presence and shed a light on a drifting star seized under our name.

Should the light turn bright, then the ins and outs of a dusty forgotten cover gets discovered, and a shooting star is released.

Our ‘Digital Footprint’ sprouts from our life span…

How active and connected are we?...

How do we spend our waking hours?...

Who are our friends and colleagues?...

What sort of person are we?...

What kind of profession are we in?...

All is being revealed. Dare I say: ‘Privacy has been eradicated!’

And with it a security that everyone and every name will not be missed! All will be recorded. 

At least we won't be forgotten... Each and everyone of the endless sea of the faceless masses, we will live on…

Humanity has certainly made its Mark on the Universe!