The web’s paparazzi culture
November 24, 2008
They did another podcast with me, this time about my piece in The World in 2009, which is The Economist‘s annual thought-leader issue.
We did this on Skype. She was in London, I was in California. My voice sounds strangely metallic and a bit choppy.
The topic, though, has nothing to do with my book. Instead, we’re talking about whether you can be online nowadays and still preserve your privacy.
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I read, and listened to, with interest your article and podcast about the dangers to individual privacy posed by the new information technologies.
However, some of the new technologies help guard individual privacy, particularly that of individual family members against the nosiness of other members in that family.
Think of cell phones and e-mails. Now, each member of a family can get mail and phone calls without the other members of the family knowing about them.
This, in itself, can lead to other problems, and it doesn’t take much imagination to surmise what these are.
Good point, Christopher. I’m told that in the cramped apartments of South Korea and Japan, in particular, family members like to pop off to a corner with their mobile device.
But: In the article and podcast I was talking mostly about “sharing” technologies, as opposed to one-t0-one media such as emailing, texting, calling. In the latter, the information is between you and somebody of your choosing (unless that person gossips). On FlickR, Twitter, MySpace etc etc, the information is between you and …. well, anybody.