This post is the fifth chapter of my book “HOMO CELLULARIS: THE ILLUSION OF PRIVACY”. Click here to read the previous chapter.
Main Ideas: Technology threatens our privacy by creating repositories of data about ourselves that are external to ourselves. Still, we don’t want to risk “not being in on the fun” of social media and smartphones just to protect our privacy.
1. IN A MOMENT OF BOREDOM
In a moment of boredom I can read about the early life and career of Eminem. I can ask a question anonymously on a message board. I can study history or watch cartoons.
A person's google search history is like a tangible record of their thoughts and concerns. Many of these thoughts and concerns are private, some are dark, some are erotic, some are silly, some are stupid.
It's no wonder that so many of us get antsy when we have to hand our computer or phone to another person.
They say that a blank internet history is the most incriminating of all, and the truth is that we all have something to hide. Throughout human history the mind has been the only entirely and inviolably private space known to man. Its private nature was never seen as an act of hiding, but was taken as a given. No one is expected to empty out the contents of their consciousness for all to see. But when the mind is made physical, this emptying out is inevitable – which leaves people with two options.
The first would be to be completely transparent.
The second would be to occasionally clear out the internet history.
Again: what do you have to hide?
As often as the answer to this question falls within the realm of the expected (pornography), it is often quite surprising. A Business Insider article compiles the most common and embarrassing Google searches by state. Here's some of what cropped up:
Florida: "Lunchables coupons."
Michigan: "Bigfoot evidence," "Lou Bega Mambo No.5."
Oklahoma: "Third nipple," "ISIS videos," "Toby Keith."
Utah: "Unicorn pictures."
Washington: "Socks in Sandals."
Before giving analysis on this data, I'd like to ask the reader to think back to a moment of watching something on your computer screen, whether it was TV, a movie, or a music video. Inevitably there comes a moment when the screen darkens for an instant and you can see your own reflection. It is always startling – this version of your face that occurs only when you imagine yourself alone. You gasp at your slack jaw, slouched posture, vacuous eyes. This is us – alone. It's not criminal and it's not wicked. But it's not pretty, either.
So it is with these Google searches. So it is with the countless thoughts that run through a human mind every day.
This is us, alone – unafraid in our privacy to be stupid (Bigfoot evidence), to be vulgar (third nipple), to be ridiculous (unicorn pictures).
2. FAME MONSTERS
People speak of privacy now more than ever before. In some ways, we are a less private society than we've ever been. We endlessly publish the details of our lives: selfies from vacation, a status complaining about a misadventure on the subway, or snapshot of a luscious looking breakfast we're about to eat (location tagged, dining companion tagged, #brunch, #yum #eatingclean).
This apparent paradox is not so paradoxical as it might seem. The more public we are, the more valuable privacy becomes to us.
We can see this in the creative evolution of just about every female pop star of the last two decades. Early songs will be about summer loves. Then, a few years later, we receive the inevitable paean to privacy, loved and lost.
Britney Spears sang: "they're still gon' put pictures of my derriere in the magazine. You want a piece of me? You want a piece of me!"
In her video for "High by the Beach" Lana Del Rey shoots a paparazzo's helicopter out of the sky.
Add to this "Paparazzi," by Lady Gaga, and "Rumors," by Lindsay Lohan.
Even those who stay clear of the spotlight are aware of its dangers. "Fame is a fickle food," wrote Emily Dickinson.
Only those who have gone public in some meaningful way have a true need for privacy, but in today's world this includes just about everyone with a smartphone and any kind of social media account. We are all paparazzi unto ourselves and unto each other.
3. DEFINING PRIVATE
As it is for many of our most cherished values, the definition of privacy is unclear. Our fear of lost privacy takes many forms. There are those who fear "the man" peering in on them from the headquarters of the NSA. But there are those who care very little about "the man" and only care about "the man next to them."
Edward Snowden put his life on the line to reveal to Americans the extent of the government's internal espionage programs. There are those who hail him as a hero and those who denigrate him as a traitor, but a surprising amount of us are unaware of exactly who he is, what he did, and why we should care.
Before interviewing Snowden, John Oliver of HBO's Last Week Tonight conducted a series of interviews on the street to assess public opinion. What he found was that a surprising amount of people were foggy and unclear about who Snowden was, confusing him with Julian Assange or else staring blankly and cocking their heads.
Snowden's revelations were certainly worth noting, but it was nothing people haven't suspected for a long time. Yes, the government can hear every phone call and read every text. Perhaps Facebook "listens." So what?
People may believe the activities of the NSA to be an overstep on the part of the government and a violation of the people's rights to privacy, but this is different than the personal sense of violation experienced by individuals who are worried that someone they know will see that they’re reading Eat, Pray, Love on their Kindle.
Objectively, such large scale Big Brother-esque surveillance methods are a larger violation than the snooping mother digging behind the socks in her son's sock drawer, but subjectively we are much more concerned about hiding things from our family, friends, and co-workers than we are with hiding them from the government.
According to a Pew Research Center survey, nine out of ten of sampled individuals (all adults living in the U.S.) knew something about government surveillance, but 56% reported having heard only "a little" about it.
82% of surveyed individuals reported thinking that it's acceptable "for the American government to monitor communications from individuals suspected of terrorist activities," while 40% think it's ok for the government to monitor American citizens in general.
While 57% of people think such general monitoring is unacceptable, this isn't an indicator of how much emphasis they give the issue.
In fact, a scant 17% reported being "very concerned" about government surveillance, while 35% were "somewhat concerned" and 46% were either "not very concerned" or "not at all concerned."
In short, we are mostly aware of government surveillance, but not so aware that we feel the need to look into it deeply. In addition to this, while we may be generally disapproving, we don't much care.
It would seem to me that individuals who are not actively engaged in large-scale criminal actions don't mind their information being stored or examined in the facilities of the NSA, likely because in such a setting the minutia of our lives, added to the minutia of millions of other equally boring lives, is essentially still private.
4. THE ANOMALY OF PRIVACY
We have here a jumble of factors. There is the increasing trend of individuals publishing small details of their private lives online, alongside an increasing trend of valuing and clamoring for privacy. There is more and more sophisticated means of government surveillance but people don't seem to mind or care. Privacy, it seems, is a less straightforward value than one would assume.
While we do have a natural urge towards privacy with a great deal of our habits and biological functions, this value is usually subordinated by more pressing concerns such as convenience, wealth, and in the case of the NSA, safety.
An "original architect" of the Internet, Google exec, Vint Cerf, was quoted saying, "privacy is something which has emerged out of the urban boom coming from the industrial revolution," and that further, it "may actually be an anomaly.”
In a Tech Crunch article by Gregory Ferenstein, it is pointed out that until the 19th century, "most houses had few or no internal walls. Bathing was a public act. For most of the post-Roman era, the very concept of 'solitude' was limited to clergy…" Quoting architectural historian Bernard Herman, the article goes on to say that for most of history, "intercourse, birth, death, just about every aspect of the life cycle plays out with some sort of audience.”
Privacy is therefore one of our most dearly cherished values, but something that, for most of our history, we’ve been ready to live without when push comes to shove.
Compare this to today's world. A greater number of individuals live alone than ever before, sequestered from the world in their own private apartments and homes. Our bathrooms are sacred spaces, cordoned off from the outside world. Lovemaking takes place behind closed doors as well. Even eating has become, in many instances, a solitary and private act. It would seem that we are the most private generation to ever live on earth.
We publish ourselves, yes, but we tightly control what we want people to see. We like to imagine that we have total control over our own exposure. But the more closed doors we have, the more frightening it is when one is suddenly pried open.
5. THE RISK OF EXPOSURE
In the internet age, every private person is on the edge of being exposed at all times to the entire human population. As we already know, an ill begotten tweet can go viral. A boudoir photoshoot taken by a vindictive ex-love can be emailed to your employer or your grandmother. Member details on certain websites (you know the one's I mean) can be hacked, leaked and make it all the way to your family and friends.
And yet we do nothing about it. Why? Because to leave Facebook over an objection to its terms regarding data ownership and usage would be to leave the very platform on which millions of individuals stay in touch with family and friends, get their news, organize their calendars and even find work. Sites like Facebook are no longer a mirror of our society – they are society itself. And while most of us are a little unsure of our data's fate in the cloud, we certainly don't care to be excluded from all the fun.
This just goes to reinforce the idea that privacy, while valued, is something we quickly give up upon for other values.
The leaks, the revenge porn, the public humiliation, the cyber bullying and all the other gross invasions of privacy that occur daily on the web… well, that stuff always happens to other people, or so we hope.
6. THE FUTURE OF SCANDAL
Sex columnist Dan Savage looks forward to the day when every politician has a sex tape, a lewd text, or some other such scandal visible on the internet somewhere. As things are right now, only some do, which means that it's ok for the rest of us to feign shock and indignation.
"With all of us living so much of our personal and private lives online, and everybody carrying around a porn production studio in their pocket in the form of an iPhone, we will all one day be disqualified from public life…"
For the time being, Savage knows that if we want compassion and understanding for our own (possibly inevitable) exposures, we need to create some compassion and understanding for those who have already had their privacy torn to shreds by the internet.
In the future this may be easier, and Savage knows that the generation coming up today ought to be different.
After all, each one of them is letting their teenage years play out with the so-called "black boxes" of tech in their pockets. Each one of them is snapping endless selfies, often at parties where drugs and alcohol are present.
It's almost unimaginable that this won't come up to bite the next generation in the ass. So Savage's hope is a clever one – that it comes up to bite so many of them in the ass that it's considered a wash.
But it's also possible that this vision of the future will never come to pass. We might all be exposed, but we will never all be exposed in the same ways and at the same time.
Hoping for some utopic world in which mutual exposure neutralizes the shame is therefore unrealistic. We need to instead get serious about protecting ourselves and our data in the here and now.
“The average attention span of the modern human being is about half as long as whatever you're trying to tell them.” Meg Rosoff
This post is the fifth chapter of my book “HOMO CELLULARIS: THE ILLUSION OF PRIVACY”. Click here to read the following chapter.
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