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RSS 2.0

Hello Web 3.0. Goodbye privacy

By Jonathan J. Ariel - posted Friday, 2 November 2012


Now from a corporate point of view, that makes sense. Perfect sense. One identity means less trolls, more revealing (and verifiable) information about their customers and data that is worth more when aggregated and sold to marketers.

Singing from the Facebook song sheet, many net savvy organisations will impede a consumer's attempt to manufacture more than one identity. See how far you can get by creating a second Twitter account linked to your primary email address.

Of course having multiple online identities can be beneficial for consumers. Lower inhibitions can encourage citizens to speak up on all manner of issues (think Iranian dissidents) or individuals attempting to obtain advice on a confidential basis from say the police, health care professionals (think teenage mums), religious leaders etc will feel more free to do so. And online dating and chatting will take a serious hit if we must reveal out true selves to folk we don't know.

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Hi-tech moguls will charm the dew off a blade of grass in their quest to sell all of us the claimed "benefits" of sharing. Sharing your dreams, aspirations, friends and most lucratively, your life. Keen argues against sharing when consumers cannot control what data is shared.

At length, he retells the history of privacy and sharing in the United States with numerous mentions of the contributions of Jeremy Bentham (in particular his views on utilitarianism) and John Stuart Mill, specifically his defence of individual freedom in an age of groupthink summarised in an essay titled On Liberty. Keen reserves the greatest praise for Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (from 1916 to 1939) for his 7,200 word essay in defence of the right to privacy published in the Harvard Law Review, arguably the most influential law review article ever written.

So why do we mindlessly disclose our intimate facts rendering no aspect of our lives a secret or a mystery? Keen, when interviewed in June of this year by the Verge's Laura June, offered two excuses. Neither revealing. First is our predilection for the narcissist flavour of social media. Second, the shift to a digital knowledge economy transforms us all into free agents needing and feeling compelled to build our brands via social media.

Hmmm.

It's clear that Keen sees such consumer behaviour as little short of unthinking, docile lemmings. And as Apple recognised as far back as 1985, when it comes to hi-tech, there is no scarcity in lemmings. None whatsoever.

So what's Keen's rejoinder to the chipping away at our privacy? The best answer he can weave is that we should create multiple identities. We should broadcast less of who we are. Our online identities should pose questions, rather than provide answers. We should be sealed chapters and not open books.

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He may be right.

Being mysteries not only adds to our allure, it also conceals some aspects of our lives. An added bonus is that it's damn hard for social media firms to sell mysteries to third parties.

After all, marketers pay handsomely to get to know potential customers and pay more still to better know their existing customers.

Nobody's lining up outside ad agencies to pay for riddles.

Well not until we, the consumers of Facebook, Twitter, Google, Foursquare etc force them to.

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Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us by Andrew Keen St. Martin's Press, 256 pages, New York City $13 as an eBook and $22.50 paperback.



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About the Author

Jonathan J. Ariel is an economist and financial analyst. He holds a MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management. He can be contacted at jonathan@chinamail.com.

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