Today, we are used to share ourselves with, almost literally, the rest of the world. Hundreds, thousands of people in some cases are able to see us, watch us, read us.
We are actually broadcasting our lives. Every little aspect of our lives (thoughts, feelings, knowledge) is being transmitted to known and unknown individuals.
From Facebook’s photo postings and Twitter’s tweets to our exact location in the globe (via the rising location services), today anyone who wants to can keep track of every move we make. And it feels we are not very concerned about it… in fact, it seems we like it.
But let’s go back in time a little bit. Throughout history, privacy and personal space have been variables that have changed tremendously in one direction. The arrow goes from privacy to the reduction or virtual absence of it.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the private space was reduced to the inner space of our homes. What happened within those walls, tended to remain there.
People didn’t speak about themselves in public. As Blais Pascal said “the ego (self) is detestable”, criticizing Rousseau’s autobiography (one of the firsts in history). He thought that publishing an personal diary, speaking about oneself was something selfish which contradicted decency and God’s will. He couldn’t understand why, while there are so many things to speak about, one would choose him/herself as a subject.
With the creation of the printing press and later on the coming of the “age of lights” this kind of literature flourished. What was veiled and behind closed doors now became public.
Still, in daily life, this dichotomy wasn’t so stressed… and everything remained pretty much unchanged for a couple hundred years.
Victorian society made privacy a cult, and in some way it was a step backward.
But let’s take a leap forward: the radio, newspapers, TV, the “first internet” didn’t do much to change this. It was a one way channel. You had to see what someone intended you to see (in some way until zapping was “discovered”… just kidding).
But there was a separate process working in the background, setting the foundation for what was to come: Globalization. The world was becoming smaller. Integrated, and disintegrated at the same time. While it made distances shorter it also made groups get tighter to still be able to differentiate themselves. I can skype my friends on the other side of the world as if we were next door, and at the same time I joined the group on Facebook “Argentineans living in the USA”. The same process that merge us, makes us close lines to keep (and save (?!)) our common spaces, in order not to be merged with the global tribe, which tends to blur differences (we still want to be individuals).
With Internet 2.0 everything started to change. That one-way channel became two-way. We don’t just watch and listen passively, we can be active members of this global/local community.
We can say we’ve become narcissistic (which is true. Western society has huge narcissistic issues) but we would be underestimating something very important, the fact that we are communicated and informed unlike ever before. We feel the pulse of the people we know (and some we don’t know) even when we don’t directly communicate with them. We feel the pulse of our city, country, the planet to some degree. We’ve developed a sixth sense. (More info on this here ).
If you had the chance to read Robert Wright’s Nonzero, you’ll see some correlation here. He posits that two pillars in human evolution have been information and communication. Well, we have lots of them now.
There’s a lot of concern about privacy nowadays. And it’s ok to be concerned, we have to keep an eye on it, with so many companies trying to monetize our personal data, and the children, teenagers (and adults) roaming the internet freely.
But what it seems, is that most of us don’t really care about it. It’s as if we are comfortable with this level of exposure and we don’t mind that John Doe might be peeping in our private lives.
Probably it’s a generational perspective. Maybe the majority of the Gen X are not that comfy (though my mother seems to be an exception to that rule).
It wouldn’t surprise me if the kids of today become Truman Burbanks of tomorrow.
Article by Fernando
This is my blog - I write about careers, talent management and organizational development. I've been featured at Monster.com, Alltop, WeBlogBetter and BloggingPro among others. I hope you leave this blog with more than you arrived and I look forward to discussing your ideas and projects with you. See you in the comments section.
Fernando has written 230 awesome articles for us at Fernando Tarnogol – Careers Blog
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