Friday, March 9, 2007

QotW6: Privacy...Where??!!


‘Privacy is an elusive concept (2006).’ It is the ‘ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves (Privacy, 2007).’ However, this is nearly impossible in today’s day and age with the advancement and progress of technology. ‘In the contemporary age of the internet, we are experiencing something that might be called the 'Omnipticon' in which the many are watching the many, even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time (Naked Crowd).’

I believe that "information is power" and personal information in whatever form, or of whatever nature, confers power to the owner of that information, (Privacy, 2007) which is why I suppose that privacy should be maintained at all cost unless for something which is a necessity, like i-banking. When it comes to dating services and other match making services, I feel that these services recommend people to divulge their personal details. These services make one feel that, “It's impossible to know someone on the basis of snippets of information; genuine knowledge is something that can only be achieved slowly, over time, behind a shield of privacy, with the handful of people to whom we've chosen to reveal ourselves whole.”(Naked Crowd) Even though this maybe true to an extent, I feel that people should be more cautious about their details, and should probably wait and meet the person a couple of times before revealing intimate details.

In earlier days, people believed in "surveillance." It denoted the "eye-in-the-sky," the concept of watching from above. However, describing the modern times, "sousveillance" has become a concept, which denotes ‘watchful vigilance from underneath’ using gadgets and other technology like the camera phone or other means of observation down to human level, either physically or hierarchically (Sousveillance, 2007).

As we have seen, it is now commonplace on a website to reveal hobbies, favorite foods and music, and pictures of children, in an effort to create an illusion of intimacy. Even the most intimate moments of life, such as a wedding, are now being posted on the web for public consumption (Naked Crowd). Personally, the closest I’ve gone to revealing information about myself, is on the blog for this class, or the other virtual communities I’m a part of, for instance, Orkut and Friendster. For me, topics like name, age and place of residence are the general topics that are covered under the ‘allowed to reveal’ heading. More information than this, according to me, is an encouragement to identity theft or online stalking! We have heard so many horrifying stories about trusting strangers that with time, we have become more careful with what should or should not be disclosed online. For example, even in last week’s deception blog, I mentioned how people can invade others space and privacy without the original person being aware of it or its consequences.


I feel that the risk of being exposed and making ourselves vulnerable to others is simply too high a price to pay for disclosing our personal details. Therefore, in conclusion, I want to say that, ‘privacy does matter – at least sometimes. But it’s like health: When you have it, you don’t notice it. Only when it’s gone do you wish you’d done more to protect it (2006)!’

Reference:

Rosen, Jeffery (2004). "The Naked Crowd" Retrieved March 9, 2007 from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm

Sullivan, B. (2006). Privacy Lost: Does Anybody Care? Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15221095/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Privacy. (2007). In: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Privacy&oldid=113024808

Sousveillance. (2007, February 7). [On-line]. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved March 7, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? title=Sousveillance&oldid=106389703

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