Rider Or Grass?
Wednesday, 18. October 2006, 18:59:33
Have you ever lived in a small house with lots of other people? If you've been in the army you know what I'm talking about. Yet, even in the army one has a personal space to keep his things, may that be a travel bag or a locker or something alike. Moreover he's able to keep a diary that no-one else has the right to read, that is he has a right to privacy. Even higher officers have to go through certain formalities to look at his writings. In practice most higher officers would consider such tactic at least cheap and wouldn't bother unless big troubles had arose.
What I'm trying to get at, is that even in such a controlled system as the army, there are certain boundaries that define a limited personal space and privacy for the people involved. Yet, few of those who served their duty aren't annoyed by how small these two notions seem. Most soldiers hate to give note on their whereabouts at their officers and hate the fact that under certain circumstances they may have to reveal personal things in front of their fellow soldiers, as would be the unfortunate case of having to take a leave due to family problems. So, for people that are in the army it seems like personal space and privacy is something very limited.
There is a hidden comparison in this feeling. Those people feel that they enjoy less privacy than civilians do...and they used to be right.
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Technology is a Pandora box. Anything might come out of it and society has no control upon that. Nuclear weapons and X rays. Drugs and medicine. Communication and isolation. Easy transportation and pollution. Liberty and enslavement...Technology is like very strong and very wild horses. Society can't control their birth but it may be either their grass or their rider.
When you sit in front of your computer, watching its silk TFT screen and surfing a network full of knowledge, insanity, thoughts, propaganda and almost everything that your mind could possibly imagine (or crave), you possibly assume that you are the rider of what commonly goes under information and telecommunications technology revolution (or just IT). You (and I) are like those first car owners that pose in some retro images full of joy, pride and admiration for the monstrous capabilities of their automobile. Some years later there are many that own a car and they curse stuck in traffic jams. They are disappointed because the promise of automobile technology was to get them fast and safely wherever they wished but they realize that it would take less if they just walked.
IT made a broader and more mental set of promises that all boil down to the availability of information and communication.
Information about anything you can put in your mind...
You don't know when the next train leaves? Just go to the train company's site. You want to learn what's the weather like in Peru? Just go to a global weather site. You want to know how much your tax deduction will be? Just run the relevant program. You want to find new origami sketches? Just google it. The list goes on and on and it covers almost anything a human mind may ask for. Even things that few human minds would admit they cared about. Want some examples? Sex is a good one. You want to peek into fantasies that you haven't even told your spouse about? Google them. You got to be really absurd not to find something relevant on the net.
And communication with almost anyone, no matter where he/she is located...
A sociology teacher in USA that maintains a blog. An Australian astronomer that hits one or two words at a messenger program while looking at stars. A housewife in Iceland. A teenager in Argentina. A mechanic in Russia. An activist in Nigeria. A silly programmer in Greece...And you can say whatever you want with any of these people claiming to be whoever you want. You can discuss latest news, commend on a movie, ask for directions, get info about the way a company treats its workers or exploits nature, have sex.
And all that while you comfort yourself on your chair and look at this silk TFT screen and most importantly by staying anonymous...
This has always been an inherent promise of this technology. Anonymity where it should be. It was a way of transferring the notion of real life privacy over the new technology. In real life you demand privacy when fucking. On the net you demand privacy when cyber-fucking. In real life you expect privacy when reading a book about the gay community. On the net you expect the same privacy when you google “gay community”. In real life you talk privately with people you trust on how to overthrow a tyranny. On the net you use a private IRC channel to do the same thing.
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But cars did get stuck in the traffic jam and privacy is not a promise to be kept. Never was. The tools to eliminate it were there all the time. Whenever you crawl the net you leave crumbs behind you. How you do it is a technicality. How they can be assembled and serve to draw a very good image of who you are and what you long for, is also a plain technicality. Technology was always there as a capability. Of course technologic evolution helps but what sets this part of IT to work isn't a new technological leap but rather a social step backwards. After 9/11 your real life privacy has been shrinking. Propaganda about terrorism was like a dirty rain that made surveillance cameras flourish. Every day that you walk downtown dozens of cameras record you and your story. Your personal data are recorded and even sold by companies that serve this very purpose of assembling personal data. These companies thrive at an environment where privacy is considered an obstacle for the “anti terrorist” war. You can safely assume that its really easy to reconstruct your whole life story by joining information like where you went, whom you were with, what you bought (remember your credit card?), where you studied etc. Your real life privacy and anonymity is fucked up.
Cars got stuck because everyone got one and almost everyone got to live in the big city. Automobile technology couldn't keep its promise because the priorities changed. The horse run extra wild and society became the grass.
IT is just a technology like automobiles and similarly to it, it can't (and doesn't) keep its promise because priorities changed. Your anonymity and privacy are not revered. They are at stake. Horse runs extra wild and I'm afraid that its rider is already flying in the air. There is one chance that he gets control before being the grass. He must answer the question about how negotiable privacy is and according to my notes there is only one right answer which goes like this. “Nonnegotiable and this question should never be asked again.”
If you find this answer a bit hard just think that the soldiers, we were talking about, do enjoy far greater privacy than most of the civilians out there right now.
Your life is your life and your life only. What happens in your mind or what you do as a result of this is yours by default. No-one has the right to peep in it or anyhow reveal it to others. You and you only should be the daemon guarding the gates to your thoughts and your private space. Looking inside your mind and your life wasn't the way society dealt with its problems a decade ago and I was there to testify that things were much better back then than today.
Privacy is the oxygen that your mind breathes. Attack against it, is the most basic step towards fascism and if that's where we are going I'd like to move out of this planet.
Out and Over.
-Relevant article-
That's it! You wanna sell nonsense, you gotta speak real nonsense.
WIDGETIZE