Wednesday, May 16, 2007

The future's bright, with the possibility of showers

Calling young people. I need your thoughts.

SF author and one-time roommate (for one memorable week) Charles Stross has published an interesting talk he gave on ‘Shaping the Future’, in which he extrapolates growth in technological ability and changing attitudes towards privacy, and draws some not entirely optimistic conclusions. Not entirely pessimistic either, mind you. A couple of key passages:
“If it's an offense to pick your nose in public, someone, sooner or later, will write a 'bot to hunt down nose-pickers and refer them to the police. Or people who put the wrong type of rubbish in the recycling bags. Or cross the road without using a pedestrian crossing, when there's no traffic about. If you dig hard enough, everyone is a criminal. In the UK, today, there are only about four million public CCTV surveillance cameras; I'm asking myself, what is life going to be like when there are, say, four hundred million of them? ... [snip] ... One of the biggest risks we face is that of sleep-walking into a police state, simply by mistaking the ability to monitor everyone for even minute legal infractions for the imperative to do so.”
It’s a conclusion that follows logically from his premises. But here’s a key passage from earlier in the talk:
“Our concept of privacy relies on the fact that it's hard to discover information about other people. Today, you've all got private lives that are not open to me. Even those of you with blogs, or even lifelogs. But we're already seeing some interesting tendencies in the area of attitudes to privacy on the internet among young people, under about 25; if they've grown up with the internet they have no expectation of being able to conceal information about themselves. They seem to work on the assumption that anything that is known about them will turn up on the net sooner or later, at which point it is trivially searchable.”
Assumption. Right. In any argument, it’s the assumptions that are important.

I started my personal web site in 1996, on the basis that if I was destined to become a world famous author then I should give the fans something to satisfy their craving for More Ben. Still working on it. I remember hearing one friend describing it to another as: “you can learn everything there is to know about Ben!” And I thought – no, you can learn everything I choose to let you know about Ben. (The second friend remained net-sceptical until, later in the same conversation, he was shown how to track down the website of Barnsley FC, whereupon he converted.)

I certainly put up more information on the site than I might usually divulge at a first face-to-face meeting, but it still didn’t contain anything that wouldn’t soon become apparent in a more than passing acquaintance. Eleven years and a blog later, we’re in the same situation. I may come over all friendly and chatty here in cyberspace, but unless you already know me personally you probably don’t know the names of my wife or stepson. Or my address. Or where the Boy goes to school. Or my bank details. And so on. And you need to know me very well indeed to know details about my extended family – parents, siblings etc.

So, someone might work on the assumption that anything knowable about me is available on the net, but they will be disappointed.

But of course, I am not Young People. I’m almost half my grandmother’s age, which is a scary thought. You Young Things have Bebo and MySpace and apparently you fill it up with all sorts of crap stuff that helps you ‘hook up’ (whatever that means).

Believe it or not I have a MySpace profile; I had to sign up to leave a comment on a friend’s blog. The friend in question is one of the least MySpatial people you can think of so I’m not quite sure what he was doing. According to my profile I have one friend. Not the friend whose blog I was looking at. This friend is called Tom. I have no idea who he is; he seems to have been randomly assigned to me by Murdoch’s Minions. His profile includes the helpful note that he may have been there when I signed up and if I want I can get rid of him. Well, I dunno. If I only have one friend then maybe I should hang onto him. My peculiar notion that I’m well able to choose my own friends, thank you, in my own space and time may just be a hallucination.

More Charlie:
“Now, in this age of rapid, transparent information retrieval, what happens if you've got a lifelog, registering your precise GPS coordinates and scanning everything around you? If you're updating your whereabouts via a lightweight protocol like Twitter and keeping in touch with friends and associates via a blog? It'd be nice to tie your lifelog into your blog and the rest of your net presence, for your personal convenience. And at first, it'll just be the kids who do this — kids who've grown up with little expectation of or understanding of privacy. Well, it'll be the kids and the folks on the Sex Offenders Register who're forced to lifelog as part of their probation terms, but that's not our problem. Okay, it'll also be people in businesses with directors who want to exercise total control over what their employees are doing, but they don't have to work there ... yet.”
So here’s my question to young people. Do you have these reduced expectations of privacy? Does it even occur to you that you don’t have to put everything about you out on the net, and it’s quite easy not to? ’Cos if we do end up in a future like this, I don't think it will be you lot who put us there. It will be our present generation of technophile, how-can-we-possibly-be-wrong-I-mean-we're-Christian politicians. It will be up to you lot to sort it out.

This is an optimistic assessment that I make based on the personalities and my estimation of the intelligence of the teenagers I know (friends of the real-life, reach-out-and-touch-them variety). But what do your classmates think? What’s the word on the street in yo’ hip with-it well-happenin’ world?

Go.

7 comments:

  1. Twitter is a step too far for me. And I wonder sometimes how sensible blogging is really, even semi-anonymously. But then I am not a Young Person.

    I do, however, have a myspace. And I only have one friend too (but not Tom, I ditched him, we were never close). So I have invited you to be my friend. My other friend is M's band: I am sure they would be your friend as well if you wanted.

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  2. Hmm, this is a big topic and I'll probably think of some more things later, but my first reaction is...

    Yes, I would say I have drastically reduced expectations of privacy. I think about how much I use technology and someone with a bit of tech knowledge could know me better than I know myself. If they read through all my instant messenger messages, all my texts, listened to my phone calls they would know every little detail about my life. And to be honest I'm really not worried about the state knowing all this. I am all for ID cards and biometrics and CCTV. People I have never met, who have proper authorisation, I have no problem seeing this stuff. Its other people who hack in or steal the info that I'd be concerned about.

    As for blogs and social networking that is very different. I know for sure that I censor my blog, whether consciously or subconsciously. Often I use it a lot like propaganda to paint a picture of me I think people will expect, leaving out certain things and emphasising others. As for bebo and my space I put very little up there. Young people are cleverer than you think and often what goes up isn't the real them, just the person the want people to think they are. I dont use them much and cirtainly dont meet people there. What I do do is catch up with old friends, and use it to get in contact with people who I've just met.

    heh, I feel like I'm in a general studies exam

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  3. Sorry another though, I also see my blog as a kind of public diary. Something I can look back on and remember things. But also lets me share them with people I know at the time and discuss things.

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  4. my view is similar to simon's in some respects and different in others.
    i do think i have a reduced expectation of privacy, but that reduced. i'm not a fan of social networking sites. my net presence is restricted to forums, my blog and my website(s, i'll eventually just have one, i promise).
    when i do present myself on the net though, i make sure i am real. i believe that honesty is one of the more important qualities of people and of the christian ideal, so i stick to it. i always try to present myself exactly how i am and avoid changing my phrasing to suit the situation.
    on the other hand i don't give out much on the net. in my net presence i never post photos of myself, details on where i live (except the town) or even my full name. however i get the impression that if someone was really bothered they could check out my friends sites and work out more about me, it's not hard. but to be honest i don't really care. so they find out a little more about me. so what? people who bump into me at school will know my name and what i look like almost instantly.

    summary: on the net i don't give away personal details, but i am very open with thoughts and feelings. but even if someone did use the net to find out about me i wouldn't really care.

    my friends think differently. bebo and myspace...eurgh.

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  5. From my experience I find that my friends only use myspace/bebo to talk to each other or keep in contact with people who aren't physically close. It would be highly surprising if anyone met a total stranger like this, it's not what they're using it for. Again there is very little information given, you would understand it all on one level if you knew them, and on another if you didn't.

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  6. i have myspace and bebo and facebook (oh ben...tom is the creator of myspace who is added automatically when you sign up...although you probably knew that)
    i have all of them because i have different friends on each. quite alot of my friends in bands have myspace and its good to know what they are up to.
    bebo is a school thing, lots of people have it and its not private so i'm careful about what i put on there. hometown, age and photo, but i watch my comments from other people and the photos i put up there as i know it isnt private.
    facebook is much better, lots of my older uni friends and family friends have it as well as school friends. its private, you can only see someone's profile by them confirming they are friends with you.

    i guess i do have a lower expectation of privacy but since i was brought up around the internet (dad works for microsoft) i was always very aware of who i talk to, i know the sign of a pervy man ('can i see you on webcam?' being an obvious example) and i'm very well aquainted with the 'delete/block friend' buttons!

    i am much more aware when i use my blog about what i say, probably more about my true feelings about some things than about my personal details.
    i guess i should be more careful but unfortunately its the old 'everyone does it and nothing has happened yet' which is an excuse not an answer.

    that all doesnt make alot of sense probably but thought you'd want my opinion!

    p.s. the other great thing about facebook is that schools havent blocked it yet so i'm perfectly able to send my friends silly messages during lessons!

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  7. I feel privacy is reduced in modern culture just because of how easy it is to digitally trace someone if you try and have the time.

    Information on the web is publically available and young people generally acknowledge this and are rather fake - in many ways it encourages more honesty from them. I know for a fact in my uni application that the university looks through information on me on the web - they were nice enough to send me a form asking permission to look for stuff.

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