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Welcome to the Friday’s Food for Thought post on got geoint? As always, we hope that you had a highly productive week and achieved professional goals beyond your wildest dreams. If that is the case, then surely you have earned a few minutes of reflection. This is where the FFT post comes in…we want you to view this post as prime destination for some Friday “down time.” And guess what our theme is for this week…yes, we had to do something about the Wikileaks brouhaha. Although this time, we are focusing on the concept of sharing and human nature. Do we share too much? Is this a learned behavior, and why does it get us in trouble? We hope to tackle this and much more today. Happy Friday!

WikiLeaks’ Aftermath: Big Chill on Information Sharing?
In the wake of WikiLeaks’ latest disclosures – the potential publication of more than 250,000 secret State Department diplomatic cables, Obama administration officials are vowing it won’t happen again. But, the thought of a post-WikiLeaks clampdown has some observers predicting a possible chill for information sharing in the federal government. Following WikiLeaks’ latest round of releases, which revealed sensitive and often unflattering portrayals and critical assessments of foreign leaders, “the challenge of containing sensitive data while fostering intergovernmental collaboration looms larger than ever,” Nextgov reports. Read the full ExecutiveGov post here.

Why Do We Share?
I believe that word of mouth has evolutionary origins. Put simply, the human race benefited from telling family and friends about where the best roots and berries could be found, where the year round waterhole was, or where the best hunting grounds were. In a way, something that goes viral can be seen as digital word of mouth. And thanks to the network effects of the Internet, the power of it is manifold. It can spread to in-numerous people in the blink of an eye, and all across the world. It has been freed from time and space. Today, we don’t only share vital information about where to find resources, but also information that connects us to others. In a world where we don’t have time to keep up with all our “connections”, the act of passing something on is a very easy way to reconnect. Pretty cool huh? Check out the full post by Kristofer Mencák here.

Teaching Kids to Share
Many parenting experts proclaim that children must learn to happily share their toys with siblings and friends. Other popular parenting books declare that children should not be required to share but should instead learn the value of ownership. I will make a few observations before “sharing” my views with you. Children come with a powerful, built-in “wanter.” Walking down the aisles of a store with a child, one hears pleads of, “I want that one, the red one,” and “I need this one, the big one,” punctuating the air. Children don’t want what they already have nearly as much as they want what is out of reach, unless another child happens to pick up one of the nearly forgotten possessions. Then the “wanter” goes into overdrive. Kids want what others have. Check out the full Dr. Greene post here. And, perhaps we share too much because it is a learned behavior from our childhoods?

Top 10 Things to NOT Share on Social Networks
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that social networking Web sites are the latest and greatest way to interact with other users on the Internet. Thirty-five percent of adults on the Internet now have a profile on at least one social networking site, and 51 percent have more than one. Three-quarters of users between the ages of 18 and 24 have an online profile [source: USA Today]. The Pew Research Center found that 89 percent of these people use the sites to keep up with friends, 57 percent to make plans with friends and 49 percent to make new friends. Read the full HowStuffWorks post here.

Top 5 Punk Songs to Share With Your Kids
Alright, so we are coming up short with a good music video about information sharing. There’s just nothing really out there…John Lennon’s classic song Imagine about “sharing all the world”? Yeah that one could have been a contender. But we stumbled upon this site that features the top 5 punk rock songs to share with your kids. Hey, it involves sharing right? And, introducing the younger generation to punk rock is something we applaud. Here’s our favorite from that list…The Clash’s “London Calling.”

Tags: Friday's Food for Thought, got geoint?, Information Sharing and GEOINT, Information Sharing and the Intel Community, London Calling, The Clash, The Clash and London Calling, WikiLeaks, Wikileaks and too much information