I agree completely, and it does make me sad. Where...

2007-09-10T06:42:00.000-05:00

I agree completely, and it does make me sad. Where the Internet has the potential to make the world a smaller place and help to enlighten and inform, it can be used for evil as well.

There really isn't a best answer. I can't think of a win-win. At best it's just an accepting of reality. I think my whole point was that people shouldn't rely on technological solutions to protect themselves or their privacy. I think it could lead to a false sense of security, and possibly put people at greater risk. (Thinking out loud a bit.)

So if we can't guarantee privacy-- then I don't want the people who might yield their power in inappropriate ways to have any privacy either (not that I think they can, but I'd like to see the barriers removed sooner rather than later). I don't want the hypocrites of the world hiding behind their firewalls while everyone else is exposed.

I don't disagree with the 'if you don't want peopl...

2007-09-09T22:00:00.000-05:00

I don't disagree with the 'if you don't want people to know it don't put it on the Internet'. However, that's not as easy a choice as it sounds when choosing not to put [whatever] on the Internet means you're opting out of, say, an entire social network or focused discussion with your classmates, or connections with your peers.

But the biggest problem that I see is that transparency only works if all participants have equal power. And that, we know is not the case. We have models for situations where everyone knows everyone else's business and doesn't act on it--villages, small rural towns. We also know such places are far from perfect and, in fact, when they break down often do because of power differentials.

And even then, those (small town people) are people that you have to stand face to face to, not someone you never met possibly in another country. It's much easier to do harm to someone you've never met and never will. It's easy to make unfair employment decisions about people because you know a little about one person and a lot about the other, but what you actually don't know about either of them is how well they'll do the job you're hiring for.

I don't have a solution to this because there's lots of incentives to 'live' a part of one's life on line. But we can't make a world where we all have to spend at least part of our life on line and then say 'oh, too bad, people found out something you didn't want them to know' as if it's an individual problem when it's actually a societal one.

Comments on HighTouch: Privacy - yearning for yesteryear

I agree completely, and it does make me sad. Where...

I don't disagree with the 'if you don't want peopl...