The End of Privacy

From New York Magazine:

But maybe it’s a cheap shot to talk about reality television and Paris Hilton. Because what we’re discussing is something more radical if only because it is more ordinary: the fact that we are in the sticky center of a vast psychological experiment, one that’s only just begun to show results. More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would—and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy. From their perspective, it’s the extreme caution of the earlier generation that’s the narcissistic thing. Or, as Kitty put it to me, “Why not? What’s the worst that’s going to happen? Twenty years down the road, someone’s gonna find your picture? Just make sure it’s a great picture.”

And after all, there is another way to look at this shift. Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones. For someone like me, who grew up sealing my diary with a literal lock, this may be tough to accept. But under current circumstances, a defiant belief in holding things close to your chest might not be high-minded. It might be an artifact—quaint and naïve, like a determined faith that virginity keeps ladies pure. Or at least that might be true for someone who has grown up “putting themselves out there” and found that the benefits of being transparent make the risks worth it.

I've been thinking about this article for a few days now, and I think Nussbaum has a point here. If privacy is predicated on the ability to selectively deny personal information, then we may be reaching a point in which that notion of privacy doesn't mean anything. The next step is obvious: if the old notion of privacy is dead, dead, dead, then the social conventions which go with that notion no longer serve us, either. The place where the old social norms meet the new behavior are bound to produce friction.

I don't know where I stand on this, yet. I'm still a private person by nature: do MySpace, no Facebook, no nothing. And I like my privacy, or the notion of privacy I think I have. I also don't find my day-to-day thoughts all that interesting, because my life is pretty mundane. Nussbaum talks about that later in the article, the notion of the "invisible audience". Do I have an invisible audience? Would I know it if I did?

I remember talking about this with my friend Heather years ago, and the conversation came down to two points of view. One was that the online world was driving kids to develop an attenuated multiple personality disorder, one in which they were free to flit from online personality to online personality, a sense of fluidity which could induce a personal vertigo. The other was that the ability to inhabit these different personalities gave kids the ability to role play their way through tough situations from a variety of different angles, easing the confusing burden of puberty. One view wholly negative, one positive. I opt for the more positive one myself.

In the end, though, I don't think there's any way to know. As with any social change, I think we just have to hold on and see where this one takes us.