secrecy and screen minimizing

When I was reading "Blogs, Mashups & Wikis...Oh, My!" by Bruce W. Dearstyne, I started to think about the first job I had after I graduated college.  I worked in the Human Resources department, and it was my first "desk job."  One of the only fun things about the job, besides the people that I worked with, was that I had a computer on my desk and access to the internet at my fingertips, secretly whenever I wanted it.  It was 1996, so the internet was not as developed as it is today!  Needless to say, email was a favorite of mine at that time.  I can remember sitting at my desk fooling around with the internet and email and then quickly minimizing it when my boss came into the room.  I remember feeling like I was doing something bad because what I was doing wasn't, for the most part, related to my job.  What it came down to was that I didn't want to get in trouble for using the internet and email!  Boy have things changed.  Presently, I can't imagine how work could get done without the use of the internet, email and other social media tools.  What office do you walk in to that doesn't have the internet up and going or email as a main communication tool?  Dearstyne does bring up a good point, which I think is still relevant in 2011, about the issues of security when using wikis, blogs and the like within a company or organization--who has access to creating/editing the information, what policies need to be in place when using these tools, what information will be shared with the public, who is responsible for record keeping, etc. As people get more comfortable with these tools within their jobs, communicating this way will be natural!  And now that the use of these tools is so mainstream, gone are the days of minimizing your screen at work!