Privacy on parade

Well, the young people of Great Britain in the forms of Simon, David, David, Sarah and Peter have rallied to answer my open question about privacy and what they expect of it. See the comments column of the post in question or, in the case of one of the Davidi, his own blog. The answers are encouraging. Attitudes towards MySpace and Bebo range from “eurgh” to “I have all of them because I have different friends on each”, but either way they are seen as useful tools, not personal infodumps to which it is compulsory to contribute.

A good point from David W: “You know virtually everything about my politics, but then that's the point of the blog, not my life.” (And) “The question that every "lifelogger" needs to ask themselves is: will I look back on this and cringe? If so, either stop now, or refocus your web presence.”

Indeed. Lifelogging isn’t compulsory and you’re as public as you choose to make yourself. If you feel a compulsion to reveal every single detail about yourself then you’re a mug and social Darwinian principles will apply. (Even if that isn’t you, but you have a witty or whacky e-mail or cyberspace persona, now may be a good time to change it. When you’re standing for party leader 30 years from now, once having been called sexlegend@spammail.com may come back to haunt you.)

It’s reassuring to know that the cyberspatial majority isn’t like that real-world (thankfully) minority who insist on regaling you with every incident of their tedious, tedious lives, down to how drunk they were last night and which bird they shagged.

But it begs a question. Even if they’re not prepared to add that information actively to the public datapool, there is an ever-increasing amount of information that can be added passively just by being alive in this modern electronic world. Are the instincts of the present generation sufficiently well tuned to detect abuses of this as a Bad Thing, which is what the post that started this all off was talking about?

Dunno.

Some comments on the use of blogs were also made.

Simon: “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.”

David C: “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.”

Good points, not necessarily contradictory. There is a certain amount of showmanship and it’s not pretence. This blog shines a light on particular areas of my much broader life and I try to make it shine on the nicer bits, or at least move anything unpleasant out of the spotlight before I turn it on. But it’s all genuinely my life, the real me.

And there’s never any harm in being presentable. Note how nice I was to teenagers in the original post. I could have said “right, you pimply hormone factories, it’s time to get off your wii-using web-surfing butts and make yourselves useful for a change,” but that would have been counterproductive. And not all of them have wiis.

Kidding. Love you all.