"There are also major differences in public attitudes about privacy. People can more easily find out things about each other today than in 1979, thanks to the Web, and so people now expect strangers—including potential friends, mates, and bosses—to know more about them today than they did in the past. People can also more easily share personal information about themselves, and rather than refrain from doing so in order to protect their privacy, they enthusiastically post photos and videos of themselves on Facebook and other social media sites. Thus, it is possible that people’s sense of privacy is also greatly altered, as if the whole country moved from a big city to a small town, trading in the benefits of anonymity and independence for the advantages of community and security."I get the feeling were are not going to "recognize ourselves" in 10 years.
Salon via Instapundit's notice of professor Eric Posner's new blog
6 comments:
What's the saying? Just because you can doesn't mean you should? Something like that?
The current interpretation of the Constitution is, more or less, "the federal government can do anything it wants".
So yeah, it is probably Constitutional. But so what? Repealing the 13th amendment would be Constitutional too, that doesn't make it something decent people should support.
I get the feeling were are not going to "recognize ourselves" in 10 years.
I'm 45 and I largely find the country and the people alien. I don't understand a thing about it anymore and feel completely lost. I don't really like it, or the people that keep electing the kind of cretins that run the country and do so year after year.
Here is his blog post linking to the Slate article:
"Or so I argue in Slate. Moreover, I believe that advances in Internet communications, data storage, data analysis, search, video surveillance, drones, and sensor technology will eventually render obsolete legal and constitutional privacy protections as they are currently understood. That, in the long run, the “assumption of risk” fiction of Smith will expand, not (as everyone believes) contract. That people will voluntarily give up information to the government in return for security against crime and foreign threats, in the same way that they give up information to Google in return for marginally better search results. That they will not think of themselves as compromising their independence or privacy, just as no one (aside from a tiny minority of privacy advocates) who uses Google really thinks of himself as giving up his independence or privacy. That the resulting society will not resemble 1984 in any meaningful sense (though it may resemble a Philip Dick novel)."
I have wondered if general information is a given as society progresses more deeply into cyber reality. Back when phone books were first printed, I wonder if there were any nay-sayers warning against the dangers of anyone being able to find you :)
He says life will be like a Phillip Dick novel. Never read one; will someone recommend a fave?
He says life will be like a Phillip Dick novel. Never read one; will someone recommend a fave?
I've read enough Dick to not want to live in his world, how about that?
Actually I think one of the Killer Bs covered this, either Benford or Brin. I remember that in one fictional future Switzerland was the last country to give up all privacy, and that only came when the started a nuclear war with the rest of Europe and were exterminated. Imagine a future in which you MUST have cameras everywhere in your house, and EVERYONE must have access to them at all times.
I'll assume Posner didn't mean that particular novel. And apparently he's too far above it all to allow comments, or he'd be reamed out by now.
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