I guess what I would say in answer to it is that if we are doomed to be spied apon and gazed and studied by everybody we better all get ALOT more comfortable with each other, because I don't think everyone will become like the Victorians again. Society and Government will either become oppressive or very open minded about sex, masterbation, drug use, people going to the bathroom, etc, etc...
Even everyone knowing that we are prone to cancer.... either the health care system evolved to cover them or since they are a bad risk they don't get any coverage...
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Humans are much more adaptable than Luddites (especially privacy pundits) give them credit. I think everyone should go back and read the Usenet privacy discussions circa 1996. The first generation of WWW search engines was coming out, and a lot of people thought that exposing all the information available via http to an unknown audience would cause the end of the world as we know it. They were right, but not the way they thought Sure the government has more at its fingertips now than it did a decade ago, but by preserving the essentially many-to-many nature of the medium, we've seen the largest growth in stored knowledge + freedom of expression in history.
Aside: "privacy" as we know it has really only been around as long as widespread urbanization, and with it, anonymity. The main reason it's not in the original BoR is because nobody cared at the time. It takes some mighty creative reading of the 14th Amendment (which itself is only barely an industrial-revolution artifact) to extract this notion. Fast-forward, and today's kids are growing up on LiveJournal. I'm optimistic we'll have the chance to put informational protectionism in the dumpster where it belongs in our lifetime.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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My concern is with freedom. For example...I don't mind having the population disarmed, as long as the government and police are disarmed too. I don't mind widespread information, as long as it's not used against you.
Rich, I can see and actually feel your optimism about this. But we must go carefully.
Posts: 4953 | Registered: Jan 2004
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It depends what you mean by that. "Carefully" can mean "plan it until you get it right," which is great. However, "carefully" in this country usually means "slowly" -- I think that's a terrible idea, since another area humans have proven very adaptable is in their acceptance of government intrusions so long as each step looks innocuous. If history is any indication, we might be best off throwing open the floodgates: it's scary, exciting, and most importantly impossible to reverse. Not even China was able to ban Altavista with much success.
Our present modes of operation won't all work, but we seem to have better luck correcting after the fact than wishing for good intentions. For example, if tomorrow everyone suddenly had fully operational RFID cars, the way current software is programmed approximately 8 billion tickets would be mailed in the first few hours. Not pretty, but you can bet we'd finally have the momentum to write some sane traffic regulations, especially when politicians discover it's too late to write in backdoors that excuse them from their little revenue schemes.
Posts: 1839 | Registered: May 1999
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I'm all for change... as long as it's slow. When we have fast change it usually comes in the form of war or civil war.
But your point about being too slow and that "humans have proven very adaptable is in their acceptance of government intrusions so long as each step looks innocuous" is VERY correct.
How to strike a balance?
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Sure the government has more at its fingertips now than it did a decade ago, but by preserving the essentially many-to-many nature of the medium, we've seen the largest growth in stored knowledge + freedom of expression in history.
