Fuzzy Signals

Exposure

"Publication is a self-invasion of privacy." – Marshall McLuhan

I think the web and increasing connectivity will only amplify this state of affairs, and may accelerate the evolution of what we mean by privacy in the contemporary sense. McLuhan did predict that there would be no place to hide. I'm torn by both the positive and negative implications of this. Increasing transparency means it's harder to tell a lie, harder to do bad things. The feedback loops of accountability are tighter and shorter. But at what cost? What happens when transparency goes bad? What then?

History comforts me a little on this front. The concept of privacy is relatively new and culturally relative. The word first started appearing in the English language in the early 1700s. So it basically co-evolved with the shifting social structures around the Industrial Revolution. So perhaps we're seeing another phase where the boundaries between what we consider private and public information, what we consider private and public space, are blurring and morphing into something else that's hard define and see at present. Which begs the question: what new language will we invent to describe more accurately these new concepts and social configurations around privacy, and more generally, the relationships between our public and private spaces?