Appropriate public-private boundaries, and public or private to whom, is a matter of context and point of view
3D organizations, groups, and positions have 2D surfaces inside and outside. External surfaces are generally public while internal surfaces are generally private to group members or jobholders, e.g., team rooms.
Identity/Boundaries: Outside-Inside, Public-Private
Group identity requires an internal world, privacy for a set of actors. Interaction requires an external world open to observation. Human structures—physical, virtual, and organizational—need both. As individuals we are embraced by a nested set of “wholes,” boxes with boundaries, and have an ability to cross those boundaries that depends upon context.

Real-world entities and organizations have insides and outsides, with inherently different public-private conditions for visibility and transparency; e.g., the planet’s surface is available to all by satellite photos, but my thoughts are accessible only by me. Everything else is in between. Hence the spectrum of transparency at different levels.

Organizations with their teams and positions are bounded from above by our common planetary home, and from below by the singularity of each individual person. As three-dimensional entities, there are outside and inside surfaces to collect and represent information. This easily distinguishes between needs for outside transparency and inside privacy.
Three great domains dominate organized human life on earth:
  • Earth, the planet itself: Our physical universe, home to living and material objects, like us, and human places everywhere (organized into jurisdictions)
  • People, you and me: the social universe we are born into anchored in families and extended to friends, clans and cultures that we are part of as unique individuals
  • Organizations, entities we work in: the organizational universe we have created of interdependent businesses, hospitals, schools, governments and other collaborative entities that make up our interconnected global civilization