Convenience or privacy? Neil Postman, an author and cultural critic who often wrote on the effect of technology on society, argues that technology is always a trade-off. We can buy convenience in exchange for privacy, or zealously guard our privacy at the cost of inconvenience. As technology becomes more ubiquitous, as lives are digitized, the difficulty of preserving privacy increases. The technology giant Google has expressed increased concern over this in recent years. In a recent article in the New York Times, Google was spotlighted for fighting to protect personal data. One privacy advocate, Trevor Timm, stated in the article: “People probably assume that all their communications, whether it’s physical letters or phone calls or e-mails, are protected by the fourth amendment and the police have to go to the judge to get a warrant. In fact, that’s not the case.” Whoa. Does that surprise you? Should it? Maybe, but maybe not. Look at it this way: Are you going to go take a bath in your local swimming pool and then accuse other patrons of “violating your privacy?” The internet has become a global “swimming pool” of information as it were. It is too big, too complex, and too unknown, even to us, to globally regulate access or even attempt to guarantee privacy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that privacy isn’t important, or that we shouldn’t try to protect it. I’m just drawing our attention to what the internet has become, in spite of what we think it should be. If you think that you should be entitled to privacy when you instagram your latest gourmet meal, go take a bath.
Digital Privacy
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