There can be little doubt that social networking has become a significant part of many of our everyday lives.  An article last month in Wired Magazine explains that not only has the phenomenon taken hold in our personal lives, it has become a coveted aspect of the online industry with the largest internet powerhouses vying for the opportunity to take advantage of the wealth of personal information we share everyday on such sites.

Focusing on the contentious relationship between Google and Facebook, the article seems to portray an online rivalry of sorts between social networking and the algorithmic based internet search engines.  In the fall of 2007, Google executives were excited by the prospect of obtaining if not all at least a stake in Facebook.  According to Fred Vogelstein, author of the Wired article, Google’s leadership realized that Facebook has managed to change the online behaviors of its members.  The volume and nature of personal information exchanged on Facebook is a marketing gold mine for other internet companies, including Google.  While sharing personal information on the internet has become not only taboo but an outright “no no,” Facebook users not only use their real and often full names but also their real email addresses to connect with their real friends and “share their real thoughts, tastes, and news.”  Whereas internet giants like Google have struggled to tap into such personal information, Facebook enjoys a unique privilege in which its users willingly provide substantial volumes of such information.

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I attended The Chronicle of Higher Education’s annual Executive Leadership Forum in Washington, DC and had the opportunity to listen to a panel discussing the pros and cons of signing the Presidents Climate Commitment. David Oxtoby, President of Pomona College and former Dean of Physical Sciences at the University of Chicago, made a point which was similar to my thinking that he had some reservations about his and any institution’s ability to achieve carbon neutrality but thought that the process of examining efforts and pledging a commitment was important. Oxtoby earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry from UC-Berkeley and has the background to understand the scoring system. Another point that he made was that his institution does not and will not buy the emission credits that other institutions have purchased as he does not believe that the buyer can control the long term outcome (the owner of the forest could harvest the trees, for example). Mark Wrighton, Chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis, said that his institution had not signed the Commitment but discussed the many activities underway to reduce carbon emissions including supporting a light rail with five stops at WU and providing rail passes to employees. Kathleen Schatzberg, President of Cape Cod Community College and one of the charter signers of the Commitment, discussed her efforts to obtain state of Massachusetts approval for the first LEED-certified building at a state higher ed institution. Other efforts at her campus included converting 80 percent of previously mowed open space to meadows and receiving funding for a wind turbine. I left the session inspired by the efforts of the three institutions and their presidents.

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