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I question how much privacy really did exist before the modern era of large cities and impersonal lives. When we all lived within spitting distance of our fami

I question how much privacy really did exist before the modern era of large cities and impersonal lives. When we all lived within spitting distance of our families in a single common room, and everyone in town knew you from birth to death, how much different was life then from now? Will the 'erosion' of privacy really just return us to a state that we (humanity) have previously been in?

jiggy2011 14y ago
Perhaps, but in past times you would live your life in a small community of people who would "know" you and would know all kinds of both positive and negative things about you. What you are looking at in the future is the possibility of having people all over the world who don't really know you at all making judgements about you based on incomplete (even if still comprehensive) and possibly out of context information. For example "cyber bullying" where what would once be bullying from perhaps a small group of people at a school can be escalated into cases of kids having thousands of hateful messages from people who they have never met posted on their facebook wall or their pictures turned into memes or whatever. For example the "star wars kid". For example: Imagine going for a job interview in another country and having the interviewer say "you're that idiot who did X" because that is basically how you are known to the world despite your meaningful work in some unrelated area.
- true_religion 14y ago
  A question I'd have is when is reputation more sticky? When you have small pieces of information about another person and don't really know them outside of that 1 dimension? Or when you have a holistic image of them yet for one reason or another its tilted towards like or dislike? For example, I think in small towns the pariahs and those dubbed 'weird' have a harder time getting rid of their reputation and there was always far more pressure to conform than there is today.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    I would imagine the holistic image would be more sticky since that is the one more likely to be shared by a large number of people and is usually the more "exciting" view. When you become well known in a small town for some particular thing which may give you a bad reputation you have the option to move away or wait for time to fade that reputation somewhat. On the internet there will be hard evidence in existence for perpetuity.
lumberjack 14y ago
Privacy from family members and privacy from strangers are not the same thing and I venture say that people value the latter much more than the former. Edit: And besides, in small knit societies the lack of privacy is reciprocal. It's not the same thing as having a small group of people who control massive data centers and have the capability to pick up on some dirt on anyone within hours of requesting it.
- true_religion 14y ago
  Oh I agree, but the future world we're facing is that everyone will have a little dirt on everyone else due to the proliferation of material---the example in the comment I responded to was your friends and family being fed a feed of your tripping on the street because a stranger tagged it as 'lol funny'.
majormajor 14y ago
I've often had the same thought. I suspect that the pre-internet big-city age will end up being a blip on the historical "ease of acquiring real privacy/anonymity people had" graph. There's too much pressure from both sides. Companies, governments, etc, all want to know, and lots of people want to share. I think the future will be one of (social, at least) privacy through getting lost in the huge sea of people instead of privacy through actual anonymity.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  There's a line to be drawn between, "privacy from people who are actively looking at you to find something about you" and "privacy from computer algorithms that will make decisions about you based on your personal activities" Whilst it is likely that you will get "lost in a sea of people" for the most part, it's also quite likely that you will "stick out" in one way or another and this might not be in a way you like or even in a way that is necessarily fair.
HalibetLector 14y ago
The key difference is they traded privacy for personal trust and rapport. When you live in the same foxhole with your entire family and are always interacting with the same small community, trust is built up over time. You knew everybody in a personal way, not just as an abstract notion of a person on the other side of the world. The way we're heading, we'll have neither personal trust nor privacy. It's not JUST the lack of privacy that's a problem, it's the fact that any stranger can know everything there is to know about you. In a small community, everybody has to have good working relationships with everybody else or the community dies. On the internet, not everybody has your best interests in mind.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  There's also the issue that information is easily spread "virally" online. The information that is actively spread though tends to be stuff that is outrageous or scandalous (often taken out of context) or whatever rather than the positive but boring stuff. Star wars kid could probably cure cancer, but he'd still be "the star wars kid" to most people.
  - true_religion 14y ago
    I think the issue is that if we know only one thing about you, that one thing is your label. I see a policeman on TV, he's a 'cop'. Sure he may be a father, avid sci-fi junkie, and so on, but all I see is one dimension. If Star Wars Kid cured cancer, we wouldn't forget about his light saber antics but we'd add that to our impression of him----now he's a nobel winning scientist, with an impressive intellect, who has saved potentially billions of lives..... oh and in his youth he used to geek out on Youtube.
    - jiggy2011 14y ago
      True, something of that magnitude would probably change expectations. But what if you are just a good software developer or something like that? The policeman example is interesting, what happens in a society where a policeman is trying to be taken seriously and discourage you from some activity you are doing but your glasses automatically recognise his face and say "hey, I see you are being harassed by the police, these naked pictures leaked by his ex-wife might be of use to you".

jiggy2011 14y ago

Perhaps, but in past times you would live your life in a small community of people who would "know" you and would know all kinds of both positive and negative things about you. What you are looking at in the future is the possibility of having people all over the world who don't really know you at all making judgements about you based on incomplete (even if still comprehensive) and possibly out of context information. For example "cyber bullying" where what would once be bullying from perhaps a small group of people at a school can be escalated into cases of kids having thousands of hateful messages from people who they have never met posted on their facebook wall or their pictures turned into memes or whatever. For example the "star wars kid". For example: Imagine going for a job interview in another country and having the interviewer say "you're that idiot who did X" because that is basically how you are known to the world despite your meaningful work in some unrelated area.

true_religion 14y ago
A question I'd have is when is reputation more sticky? When you have small pieces of information about another person and don't really know them outside of that 1 dimension? Or when you have a holistic image of them yet for one reason or another its tilted towards like or dislike? For example, I think in small towns the pariahs and those dubbed 'weird' have a harder time getting rid of their reputation and there was always far more pressure to conform than there is today.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I would imagine the holistic image would be more sticky since that is the one more likely to be shared by a large number of people and is usually the more "exciting" view. When you become well known in a small town for some particular thing which may give you a bad reputation you have the option to move away or wait for time to fade that reputation somewhat. On the internet there will be hard evidence in existence for perpetuity.

lumberjack 14y ago

Privacy from family members and privacy from strangers are not the same thing and I venture say that people value the latter much more than the former. Edit: And besides, in small knit societies the lack of privacy is reciprocal. It's not the same thing as having a small group of people who control massive data centers and have the capability to pick up on some dirt on anyone within hours of requesting it.

true_religion 14y ago
Oh I agree, but the future world we're facing is that everyone will have a little dirt on everyone else due to the proliferation of material---the example in the comment I responded to was your friends and family being fed a feed of your tripping on the street because a stranger tagged it as 'lol funny'.

majormajor 14y ago

I've often had the same thought. I suspect that the pre-internet big-city age will end up being a blip on the historical "ease of acquiring real privacy/anonymity people had" graph. There's too much pressure from both sides. Companies, governments, etc, all want to know, and lots of people want to share. I think the future will be one of (social, at least) privacy through getting lost in the huge sea of people instead of privacy through actual anonymity.

jiggy2011 14y ago
There's a line to be drawn between, "privacy from people who are actively looking at you to find something about you" and "privacy from computer algorithms that will make decisions about you based on your personal activities" Whilst it is likely that you will get "lost in a sea of people" for the most part, it's also quite likely that you will "stick out" in one way or another and this might not be in a way you like or even in a way that is necessarily fair.

HalibetLector 14y ago

The key difference is they traded privacy for personal trust and rapport. When you live in the same foxhole with your entire family and are always interacting with the same small community, trust is built up over time. You knew everybody in a personal way, not just as an abstract notion of a person on the other side of the world. The way we're heading, we'll have neither personal trust nor privacy. It's not JUST the lack of privacy that's a problem, it's the fact that any stranger can know everything there is to know about you. In a small community, everybody has to have good working relationships with everybody else or the community dies. On the internet, not everybody has your best interests in mind.

jiggy2011 14y ago
There's also the issue that information is easily spread "virally" online. The information that is actively spread though tends to be stuff that is outrageous or scandalous (often taken out of context) or whatever rather than the positive but boring stuff. Star wars kid could probably cure cancer, but he'd still be "the star wars kid" to most people.
- true_religion 14y ago
  I think the issue is that if we know only one thing about you, that one thing is your label. I see a policeman on TV, he's a 'cop'. Sure he may be a father, avid sci-fi junkie, and so on, but all I see is one dimension. If Star Wars Kid cured cancer, we wouldn't forget about his light saber antics but we'd add that to our impression of him----now he's a nobel winning scientist, with an impressive intellect, who has saved potentially billions of lives..... oh and in his youth he used to geek out on Youtube.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    True, something of that magnitude would probably change expectations. But what if you are just a good software developer or something like that? The policeman example is interesting, what happens in a society where a policeman is trying to be taken seriously and discourage you from some activity you are doing but your glasses automatically recognise his face and say "hey, I see you are being harassed by the police, these naked pictures leaked by his ex-wife might be of use to you".