"Devastated but Don't Ask Me Why." That's a status message I saw on a social network, and it once again made me think about the nature of privacy.
Despite obviously being willing to share information over the Net which we may not have been willing to share over coffee, we still demand privacy. We exhibit facets of our lives, and then inform people that our privacy should be respected. And while that's entirely understandable: privacy should be respected, what often seems to happen is that people volunteer more information than they ever should if they want to keep something private, and then demand that others delve no further.
Take the case of the status message -- if you choose to inform the world that you're devastated, perhaps you should not also require people not to ask you questions in the same breath. Yes, you do have the right to privacy, and you have the right to refuse to answer questions, but if those two rights are important to you, why on Earth would you leave a message up for all of your "Friends" on a social network to see saying that you're devastated? Unless of course you do want them to ask (? themselves) why you're devastated.
Although that's perhaps got something to do with the changing nature of the way in which we view privacy. There was a time when certain subjects were private. Nowadays, it is not certain subjects which are "private" -- what defines whether or not a matter is private in our eyes is not its content but our willingness to share the infomation, to control whether or not that information is made public. If we choose to make it public, it certainly isn't private even if it involves the most intimate details of our lives, but if we choose not to share it, it is private even if the "it" involves mundane details of what we ate for dinner.
Despite obviously being willing to share information over the Net which we may not have been willing to share over coffee, we still demand privacy. We exhibit facets of our lives, and then inform people that our privacy should be respected. And while that's entirely understandable: privacy should be respected, what often seems to happen is that people volunteer more information than they ever should if they want to keep something private, and then demand that others delve no further.
Take the case of the status message -- if you choose to inform the world that you're devastated, perhaps you should not also require people not to ask you questions in the same breath. Yes, you do have the right to privacy, and you have the right to refuse to answer questions, but if those two rights are important to you, why on Earth would you leave a message up for all of your "Friends" on a social network to see saying that you're devastated? Unless of course you do want them to ask (? themselves) why you're devastated.
Although that's perhaps got something to do with the changing nature of the way in which we view privacy. There was a time when certain subjects were private. Nowadays, it is not certain subjects which are "private" -- what defines whether or not a matter is private in our eyes is not its content but our willingness to share the infomation, to control whether or not that information is made public. If we choose to make it public, it certainly isn't private even if it involves the most intimate details of our lives, but if we choose not to share it, it is private even if the "it" involves mundane details of what we ate for dinner.