This has been put on the backburner for far too long. Time to write that long-overdue post in response to all the nonsense that i've seen going on since about forever.So what's the big deal with privacy and the internet? Honestly, i've never been able to even begin to understand why people kick up such a fuss about the issue, because as far as i can see, putting anything up on the internet signals an implicit willingness for the whole global cyber-population to read, and indeed, to respond, sometimes very vigorously, to what has been posted. i speak here, of course, of webpages that are accessible to the public - this necessarily excludes email, limited-access sites, and payment facilities like PayPal, which operate on the assumption that users are granted some level of protection from nosey intruders (which varies according to the exact functions of the programme). In those cases, privacy is a privilege paid for in various ways by the end-users - whether in the surrendering of personal information such as one's full name or address to the service provider, or in the tolerating of endless unsolicited ads selling products one cannot imagine even wanting to buy.
In all other cases, though, it is surely accepted that somebody who sets up a homepage, blog, or other similar website does so with the knowledge that the site is open to
anyone who may come across it, either accidentally or deliberately, and furthermore, that whatever is put up on that page is also subject to whatever response or critique, positive or negative, its audience feels like giving it. That is, after all, a fundamental trait of the internet, which can be likened to an enormous, ever-expanding network of interactive notice-boards connecting a select segment of the human species in an orgiastic excess of information - facts and opinions spurious or otherwise - that everyone revels in, loves, hates, loves to hate and hates to love. Membership in this network is a privilege paid for by the loss of privacy that broadcasting one's opinions necesarily entails,
by definition.
Sounds like a fair exchange, won't you say?
That is why i can never understand it when, for example, bloggers fulminate against the breach of privacy committed by random, anonymous internet surfers who happen to come across their sites and, perhaps, are fascinated enough to stay. The whole notion of
publishing something on the internet, by its very nature, entails the making
public (note the
etymology) of whatever it is that one puts online. To complain that others are intruding into one's private space by reading one's public-access blog without permission is, not to put too fine a point upon it, stupid and unreasonable. As is the expectation that one's blog, once put online, can and should be accessed by only a privileged few. Yes - the privileged few i spoke of earlier on: the few (and they
are few, relative to the total population of our planet) with the education, financial and technological means to have access to the internet in the first place.
i'm not just saying that anyone who maintains a public-access webpage should be prepared to have the contents of the site scrutinised and even criticised by all and sundry. i'm saying that if one
really thinks about it, (and frankly, it doesn't take that much thought, really), one would realise that the only logical and defensible reason for posting anything online for public access is to broadcast one's opinions to the whole cyber-universe. And this of course assumes a corresponding willingness to be responsible for any consequences that such broadcasting entails.
So, to all bloggers, homepage owners, and so on: no more of this bitching about people who read your public-access website without your permission. The fact that your public-access site exists in the first place already constitutes your implicit permission, whether you are aware of it or not. And i would go further and risk offending you by saying that any unawareness on your part is a sign, not of ignorance, which is forgivable and easily remedied, but of a failure to think, which is not.
Enough of ranting. There are intelligent people out there who don't need all this nagging. Let me talk to them instead.
One of the most fascinating aspects of 'life' on the internet is the way it allows users to construct a new cyber-identity that may be totally different from one's 'real' identity, whatever that may be. Though i must confess that the completely new alter egos don't intrigue me as much as the ones that simply emphasise just one aspect (and this may well be the most 'important' one, whatever that may be) of the user's personality. It's an interesting method of self-fashioning, much like that done by almost all writers and artists, actually, but with an even higher degree of anonymity and thus, in a sense, non-accountability, than usual. Nothing else throws into such sharp relief the age-old idea that each of us is more than the sum of our parts, that even if it were possible to create a separate website to express each aspect of our ever-changing personality (daughter, mother, sister, friend, boss, employee, mentor, writer, reader, musician, etc) the sum of all these websites would still not be able to capture the
essence of our total identity. All we can hope to capture is a shadow of a shadow of a dream of the self.
Which is actually deeply liberating, if you think about it. Because all this frees us from the burden of guilt that comes with fears that we may be misrepresenting ourselves on our blogs and homepages, that we may be engaging in some form of
duplicity. So three cheers for double lives on the internet!
......
