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Maciej Ceglowski recently wrote about this: https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm - he calls
by turdnagel 7y ago
Maciej Ceglowski recently wrote about this: https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm https://idlewords.com/2019/06/the_new_wilderness.htm - he calls it "ambient privacy."
> For the purposes of this essay, I’ll call it ‘ambient privacy’—the understanding that there is value in having our everyday interactions with one another remain outside the reach of monitoring, and that the small details of our daily lives should pass by unremembered. What we do at home, work, church, school, or in our leisure time does not belong in a permanent record. Not every conversation needs to be a deposition.
The article is presented more in terms of JS/app trackers, but I believe the analogy still applies.
- totalperspectiv 7y agoAbsolutely. In the book I like above he gives a similar analogy: that most conversation is made up of little meaningless things, but that those meaningless things are essential to the more momentous things that build upon them. It would be ridiculous to require that all conversations between individuals be conducted with a third party observer, both for the logistical ramifications, but also because it would destroy the little things that are the building blocks of society, essentially. I also like the bathroom door analogy. Everyone knows what you are doing, but we still insist that there is a door.
- pizza 7y agoReminds me much of the philosopher Fredric Jameson's notion that modern culture basically exemplifies the end of temporality. There is much less forgetting, including forgetting of inconsequential minutiae, nowadays.