Interesting article by Bill Thompson on what happened when he blogged about a meeting he was invited to. Here’s an excerpt:

Those who would like to control the free flow of information, whether they are organising invitation-only events or running the government in a closed society, need to realise the significance of this change.

The blogosphere has shifted the boundary between private and public, and made it much, much easier for anyone who desires it to engage in the public sphere.

If I had been acting maliciously then I could, of course, have set up a new Gmail account, created a Blogger identity using it and then posted my report anonymously.

I suspect that this would not have worked since I was the only person with a laptop in the room, but normally it would have been effective.

Our normal assumptions about what is and is not public, or about the proper limits on how widely we should share the things we see or hear or learn, no longer apply, but we have yet to figure out a new set of norms.

We need to do something about this, and fast, because otherwise we’ll see more slips of the keyboard like the one I made.

Read the full article on BBC News.