Cartoonist and social commentator Scott Adams of Dilbert.com Blog creates a spectacularly creepy, and therefore effective hypothetical fetish by way of explaining why life in a completely privacy-free culture wouldn’t be as bad as the current half-privacy culture we live in now.
I have argued before, privacy will someday be a quaint footnote in history. When privacy goes away completely, we’ll all be freer. There’s only a penalty to privacy when your asshole neighbor can look down his nose at your hobbies while secretly masturbating to Field and Stream magazine. The best two situations for society are when you have either complete privacy or complete non-privacy. It’s the middle ground that creates problems. That’s where we are now.
And here’s the thing! There’s nothing wrong with masturbating to photos of trout or doughy men in camouflage. Except that in a half-privacy world practitioners can pretend there is. And use public displays of that pretense of intolerance to… burrow deeper into their own duck blinds closets.
What Adams is saying, I think, is that in the future there won’t be any closets… but neither will their be as much need for it.
Maybe so. I do think he’s being uncharacteristically optimistic about it (and the rest of his post, which is more about the end of cash than the end of privacy is even more optimistic.)
But I get his point that the current half-privacy we’re living with now creates an awful lot of opportunities for intolerance and hypocrisy.
I do agree that he’s rather
Submitted by xMech (not verified) on Thu, 2010-07-01 11:12.I do agree that he’s rather too optimistic about the future, but besides the created fetish directly mentioned, if privacy becoems a footnote and the norm is total non-privacy, wouldn’t that probably lead to privacy being fetishized? Often, we find the taboo desirable, and part of what makes some fetishes all the more powerful is that people not only care, but are bothered by that fetish. So, would the (even optimistic version) future without privacy lead to privacy being fetishized?
Or maybe it is more telling of myself that my first reaction to reading that excerpt was another fetish…
I think Adams is missing the
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-07-01 11:46.I think Adams is missing the distinction between privacy and secrecy. Privacy gives me more freedom to do what I want with a partner, given that I don’t get off on exhibitionism. Secrecy, on the other hand, has all of the disadvantages that he and you describe. Privacy is historically a much newer concept than secrecy, and because it tends to increase freedom, it’s one I’d like to see more of, rather than less.
I suppose that depends on
Submitted by Nightfall (not verified) on Thu, 2010-07-01 20:13.I suppose that depends on one’s definition of “privacy” and “secrecy”. If by “privacy” you mean the ability to do as you want without being interrupted or disrupted, and “secrecy” the ability to do as you want without anyone ever knowing that you’re doing it (for fear of reprisal or loss of power), then I would agree on more privacy and less secrecy. But I suspect that it would be very difficult, as the way things currently work the two usually go hand-in-hand.
Well, I already presume that
Submitted by Thaddeus (not verified) on Fri, 2010-07-02 08:07.Well, I already presume that everything I write on the internet is open to scrutiny and traceable back to me. I don’t use handles anymore for that reason.
I think the assumption that
Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-07-06 12:53.I think the assumption that our society is leading towards less privacy rather than more is incorrect. Yes some people post daily facebook updates, or microblog using their twitter account but the information given through those means is completely voluntary. The other thing is that even though a culture of openness and transparency has developed online that transparency is often hidden behind a mask of animosity. All you need to create a blog or youtube account is an email address, and we know how easy it is to get one of those. So yes people are becoming increasingly open about their personal lives, and their inner desires, but they are being open with people who’s only identifiable information they have about you is your first name and the city you live in, sometimes not even that. Yes your browser keeps a history of what websites you go to but we all know that that can be deleted.
Now contrast this with the way things would be without the internet. If you had something you wanted to learn about that wasn’t considered p.c. in your town you would have physically go to a library in order to get that information. If the topic was related to sexuality you might have to go to a specialty store to find what you want. If you wanted to talk to anyone in person you would either have look for adds in a newspaper or talk to friend to see if they knew about any groups that would cater to your interests. If you do find what you are looking for your friends might notice if you are always gone for a certain period of time every week and eventually ask where are you going.
So tell me in which of these scenarios do you think you have more privacy.
p.s. I posted anonymous to make a point I usually post under theTransitionalForm. Also I didn’t use a valid email address to make this post.
“...is often hidden behind a
Submitted by figleaf on Tue, 2010-07-06 16:13.“...is often hidden behind a mask of anonymity.” and “I posted anonymous to make a point I usually post under theTransitionalForm. Also I didn’t use a valid email address to make this post.”
Sort of yes and sort of no. You can say you’re whoever you like but for every email, every login, every comment, and even every click your IP address is always stored somewhere in the website’s server logs. You can go to another location, a web cafe for instance, but again, as soon as you login to something major (specifically Google, Hotmail, or Facebook) and you’re knit back into the grand scheme of things. You can login from somewhere with a different account but… if you use the same IP address you can again be knit back in.
Just in this blog (though not with my new software) I’ve done the same thing in order to continue a conversation with someone who’d had to shut down her blog and then start a new one.
Point being that while I think you’re half right I think it’s the same half Adams is talking about: we’ve got half privacy, which in a lot of ways is more problematic than either all privacy or none would be.
Thanks, Anonymous
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figleaf Honestly I have
Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 2010-07-06 18:47.figleaf Honestly I have never tried to track a persons internet activity using their IP address but I assume that doing that would require a lot of work so even If someone could technically use your IP address to invade your privacy very few people actually would. However I disagree with what Adam said about half privacy being a bad thing.
Privacy is not having a secret life that no one knows about but you, privacy is being able to decide how much you tell someone about yourself. By that measure privacy is gone, because the moment information gets online you have no control over it. Even if you never post any information about yourself online it is inevitable that something will get out, and it doesn’t have to be posted malevolent either. A friend could snap a picture of you at a party, post it on facebook and your boss could see it when he was deciding whether to hire you and decide he doesn’t want to work with a party girl.
I get that privacy is a problem but how would having no privacy solve that problem? Having no privacy would just give employers more reasons to discriminate against you. Having no privacy would give bigots more reasons to hate you. It would give holier than thou religious people more reasons to tell you you are going to hell. The only people it wouldn’t effect would be your close friends who already know all your secrets.
Unfortunately it’s even
Submitted by figleaf on Tue, 2010-07-06 22:28.Unfortunately it’s even easier to track someone by IP than other means. Google does it. Facebook does it. Amazon does it. And so on. You’re right that I can’t track your Facebook usage (usually, although their track record on privacy is particularly noxious.) But the point is that over time it’s requiring more, and more, and more effort to protect the privacy we’ve got, and market forces (grocery stores track your purchases, credit card companies do, etc. so it’s not just online services) are such that it’ll become more and more inconvenient to do so.
The only bright spot, such as it is, is Adams’ point that sanctimonious bosses, ministers, and neighbors will have the same glass-house problems we will, with the result that it’ll be a heck of a lot harder to throw stones.
The transition’s going to be tough. And I’d just as soon not have it at all. But if it’s going to happen the transparency will trend towards working both ways.
I hope.
Thanks, A.
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