Hello Web 3.0. Goodbye privacy

Imagine a well-meaning abattoir worker sweating day in day out at a fetid facility witnessing all manner of gawd awful practices taking place. Routines including denying animals access to water on arrival at the abattoir after an exhausting train ride; a callous disregard for animal welfare and the outrageous application of electric prodders to "manage" the herd.

Now imagine that chap turning into a whistleblower.

So far so good, don't you think?

Are you still with me? One more step please.

Now envision that after listing all the animal deprivations (both current and historic), obfuscations, deceit, corner cuttings and other shenanigans that go on every tick of the clock, the worker is at an epic loss to provide a remedy for the serious lamentations he has described.

Now you know what reading Digital Vertigo: How Today's Online Social Revolution Is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us by Andrew Keen feels like.

The book is interesting, covers a broad swathe of the privacy space and promises a great deal, but boy does it under deliver. Does it ever.

It's author, Andrew Keen is a Silicon Valley netpreneur, the host of TechCrunch.com, CNN.com commentator and author. He is besotted by technology and mesmerised by its world leading innovators, designers and thinkers. He is acutely aware of technology's intrusions into the lives of most folk and he grieves over how asinine we have behaved in permitting this technology to infiltrate our lives.

While recognising how hi-tech giants like Facebook and Twitter manufacture products that prima facie enhance our lives, he is afraid that hi-tech's silver lining comes complete with its own very dark cloud: consumers are shepherded in new ways by multimillionaires (think Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman and Jack Dorsey ) who determine not only how our online lives are managed, but how they are recorded and broadcast to both our "friends" and our non-"friends".

In short, this book opens fire at the phenomenon of "social media" which Keen claims is the first step towards hypervisibility, a condition where everything about us will be publically available to everyone. All because while we thought that because using Facebook, Twitter, Google and the like did not cost us dollars to use, we naturally assumed these applications were "free". As Keen repeats time and again, there is nothing "free". And no start-up zillionaire is working his patootie off 24/7 because he is a poet, a philosopher or altruistic. It's all about the accumulation of capital and consumers are merely online assets to be sold or loaned to third parties in return for revenue streams. It's that simple.

Regrettably while Keen alerts us to our impending loss of all privacy, he doesn't explain the ramifications to consumers of that loss. He sounds right, if vague, but it's hard to barrack for a chap who is long on allegations and frugal with the evidence, let alone remedies.

The loss of privacy is enabled by what Keen explains as the quest for "one identity", a sect led by Harvard grad and Facebook Chief "Friend" Mark Zuckerberg. David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect recalls that when interviewed, Zuckerberg declared that having more than one identity signals a "lack of integrity."

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.

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.

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.