HP has embraced the idea of a company blog by allowing their employees to talk about a wide variety of topics. From Usability to Second Life, they transparency of the organization is evident. Will we ever get to the point that we are willing to step outside of the symbolic walls to let our voice be heard? Will we be allowed to? In this, the age of transparency, it seems people still can't agree as to how much is too much transparency or the business value of that openness. The only thing that we know for sure is that a closed is the fastest way to chapter 11. Dan Tapscott made a few interesting observations:

Transparency means far more than the obligation to disclose basic financial information. We're at the start of a transparency revolution, and information technology may well be the most powerful single force for transparency in our time. Whereas yesterdays dominant broadcast media were about one-way, centrally and corporately controlled, single-message delivery, the multidirectional Internet is the opposite. No one controls its content—except for its users. The same viral marketing that made Napster an overnight success can now pummel an unsuspecting company with sarcasm, in the form of parody Web sites. Increasingly, consumers depend on growing transparency to protect themselves (against price-gouging) and prepare for marketplace combat, while they guard against excessive inroads into their privacy by companies seeking to market to them better.

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