I am rarely enticed by advertising on social media. This is perhaps partly in the spirit of rebellion. I constantly recognize topics that I've had private conversations about appear in advertisements on my social media feeds. Topics that I would never usually be interested in but were brought up by those around me are the most tell-tale signs that my devices are listening for keywords in my conversations. For example, one time on a phone call a friend mentioned that they were about to head to Sonic's "Tater…

Our interview of Carter Sharer for “The Creative Influencer” podcast is available today for download on iTunes.

Carter shared the following takeaways:  

Jon: In your teens, you started to design and create innovative walking devices?

Carter: So, this was I think probably about 2009, so I’m in high school freshman year. I get on YouTube, I remember even to this day and if you look at my like saved history from back in 2009, I had these videos, I would scour the Internet for all these, like mechanical like…

​Every once in a while, I get a text from an old high school friend, not saying hello, not saying they miss me but rather sending a more than embarrassing image of me, brace-face and all, from the depths of my Facebook page saying "lol remember when you looked like this?" Yes, Sammy, thanks to the permanency of the Internet, I will always remember.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I could hop into a time machine and warn my past self of the Internet's dangerous potential.…