Where do you stand on:
Privacy?;
Invasion of your personal space?;
The eye in the peephole watching you?
No doubt you will all roll your eyes and say DUH…where the hell do you think?
So with the latest privacy scandal rocking the UK, it’s no doubt pretty clear – who in their right mind would ever sanction such a cruel and horrible act as the hacking of cell phones for their treasure trove of private messages? Yet it was done…and ugly.
Yet – many of the same folks thought that WikiLeaks was OK – maybe even a public service – but even they would be incensed if anyone got a hold of their credit card information or home address or whatever…
By the way – this all in a world where we routinely post the most intimate info on Facebook and share what was once confidential without any thought.
Clearly we have begun to lose our own sense of what is public and what is private; what I am entitled to see and what I am clearly forbidden to share; what is mine and what is yours…
Frankly, as despicable as I think the News Of The World is – I can sort of/kind of understand the perpetrators in that we are losing our boundaries and it’s getting harder and harder to ascertain what is public and what is private beyond that credit card info (yours and mine, of course) I mentioned before.
A few thoughts – one is do nothing that requires privacy – and we might be heading in that direction:
“Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.” Will Rogers
Now – while this is a fine thought and maybe a lifestyle to aspire to – maybe – he doesn’t say live in such a way that you wouldn’t be ashamed if the town gossip broke into your home….
The real issue to me is, are we moving forward or backward?
Advancing civilization or decaying?And, to that end, I share with you two quotes – diametrically opposed – and ask you to weigh in….Listen:
“Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.” Ayn Rand
“It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.” Janov Pelorat in Asimov’s Foundation’s Edge
Personally speaking, I think more and more – and see some of my posts from the previous few weeks – Will Rogers has a clear point but that is because Asimov hit it on the head – as I wrote once before – it’s not Big Brother that worries me – it’s a world full of little brothers – all who feel entitled to you….
What do you think?
I’ve always thought about how far beyond their time the writing of Ayn Rand and Isaac Asimov were. But when viewed in the context, they seem positively prophetic.
I think one distinction that can always be respected is the difference between \I elected to share it\ and \It was stolen from me.\
On that basis, it’s not difficult to distinguish Facebook posts from News of the World \research\ and the actions of WikiLeaks. Our shifting definitions of privacy offer no defense to someone who stole information that the owner never intended to share.
I agree with Andrew completely, there is a difference between sharing and having it stolen. Losing our boundaries happens if we are passive. We can manage our boundaries if we are vigilant with people and skeptical about technology. We can have the privacy we need and derive the pleasures of sharing as we choose.
Makes me want to share something I wrote recently:
Confessions of a digital recluse.
I’m faced with an existential question. Since I’m not on Facebook, am I real or am I a figment of my own imagination?
I could ask my friends. But they are not here. They’re all with Marc Zuckerberg.
I’ve had many invitations to join them, and nervously have I demurred. It’s not that I’m paranoid but I have a feeling they’re calling me over just so they can keep a watch on me. I’ve heard stories of the place. It’s where you hang out with people you wouldn’t hang out with otherwise. It’s where you exchange fond memories with old school mates you can’t remember. It’s where you come to the opinion that your nephews and nieces should have parental supervision before flaunting their status and that you’re an old ass for so thinking. Best of all, it’s where everybody can connect with everybody else all at once. Sounds to me like an incredible orgy where nobody does anything, except put up pictures of nobody doing anything.
Of course, I may have got it all wrong, being naive in the digital scheme of things. Which, by the way, is stupid for an advertising copywriter to admit. These days you can get by without being able to spell ‘Free’ but you’re damned if you don’t know Skoost from Dropbox.
Nevertheless, having so many people in the same virtual house worries me. It’s like not knowing who will walk into the bedroom when you’re undressing. When you’re a cross-dresser you don’t want that.
You’re probably thinking I’m nuts and should go see a shrink. I did. He diagnosed my state as advanced network phobia. He likened it to a fear of crowds and asked me if I had ever been lost in the Kumbh Mela during childhood.
It’s not that I’m a misanthropist. The shrink told me I’m not. He told me I’m okay with people one on one, but act like a jerk when they are all together. After a great deal of probing he reached the conclusion that I prefer not to let my left hand know what my right hand is doing. I ended the conversation by saying his business was with helping a man be in his right mind and nothing to do with his right hand.
Just to put a rest to such insinuating remarks, I might sign up one of these days.
And then, my life will be an open book.
In the context of the private v public domain it used to be delineated that anyone famous or who chose to play out there lives in the public domain was fair game. The means by which NOTW and others acquired that info somehow became so ingrained that clearly they started to use them, whatever the story.
In the broader context as technology continues to invade our every moment and action the question is actually will anyone be able to keep anything private even if they wanted to?
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I just read the exact same article from another site, I hope you didn’t steal it. The link is http://www.commissioncrusherx.net
I disagree with a number of my friends on this, but privacy is of fairly low importance to me. However, if the future is heading towards one where I don’t have privacy, than I hope that no one has privacy – individual, business, or government. If one entity can peep on me, but I can’t peep on them, they have serious power over me, and power is often abused. This is unlikely and idealistic, of course, but if technology spreads and gets cheaper (Ex: the recent recording of police offers, the Indian official who put a webcam in his office operating 24/7, wikileaks) it is a possibility.
Also, as an aside, the post above me by Ben Strong is done by a computer and is spam. Comments like that are sent out en masse to blogs through software like Xrumer. The purpose is to gain search engine optimization juice through the link to the website he posted. In a way, this even hurts your site’s rankings, because Google has a very small penalty for linking to “bad neighborhood” sites on the web.