Something occurred to me recently. I was at the Wired Intelligence briefing and was dutifully writing down words people were saying and something struck a cord.
I was reminded of something Adam Greenfield had said; that digital footprints had changed how the world treats us. Cities used to be somewhere you went where you could 'start again', reinvent yourself, should you so desire. That's not so possible now with the persistent recording of personal digital activity that's occurring. So you're now the same person everywhere, like it or not. Well maybe that's ok but it's another little chip of privacy that's falling away.
Most people that work in digital (in various fields) accept that the idea of privacy has changed massively, accepting that what we once knew as privacy has pretty much gone.
Anyway, listening to Tom Loosemore a few weeks back (at Wired), he said something else that intrigued me; that his kids completely ignore the idea of privacy, they are totally open. They don't give it a second thought.
So two things then. Firstly, if everyone is transparent, then that picture of you on Facebook with puke on your jumper doesn't matter as everyone has one just like it. Doesn't mass transparency put everyone on a level playing field? Possibly. And secondly, the younger generations have deleted privacy without consulting anyone. To me, the second one is the interesting one.
Everyone in (generally) older generations is worrying about privacy issues of digital openness, big brother, CCTV etc etc but that generation is shrinking. Everyone behind them, the digital natives have pressed the delete button on digital privacy, and no one has noticed. Sooner than you think they will be running the world and the notion of digital privacy, even privacy itself will be different, and the rest of us will have simply blinked and said wha' happen. Is this systemic change from the bottom up? Feels like it might be. Golly.
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