I fear a world in which people are ashamed of their own personalities. A world in which people are so afraid that the present may implicate the future, that they strive to suppress the very idiosyncrasies that make them human. A world in which a single tweet or forum post can be extracted, analyzed, and appraised as an adequate reflection of one’s worth, all within a fraction of a second and without any offer of rebuttal to the accused.
I fear a world not too far from our own: A world in which in which reputations and careers are lost because of snap judgments gleaned from online photos depicting people being human. In which people find it necessary to rigorously manicure their Facebook profiles and Internet history to protect against future accusations from employers and colleagues.
At what point will this vigilant sanitization of our digital lives become standard procedure in the real world? At what point will we stop exploring, stop discovering, and stop growing because we fear every false step and humiliating indiscretion will be immortalized in a Google search? At what point will we actually become the banal, meretricious caricatures of ourselves that we present online on our LinkedIn and Facebook profiles?
Though it may be far off, I do not think this dystopia is unbelievable. We’ve all done Google searches of our own names, hoping that the results confirm our own optimistic self-evaluations — and often they do. But for many others, the results are less than favorable. There are hundreds of stories of people losing their careers and reputations over falsely defamatory comments found on the Internet. Teachers have been fired over Facebook images, students have been barred from internships over Myspace comments, and politicians have been demonized for insensitive tweets.
In 2007, Miss New Jersey was blackmailed through photos of her dancing on a bar table, fully clothed — and was nearly stripped of her title. A single night destroyed her reputation, her career, and her dignity; she was powerless to control any of it.
Once we are embroidered with a digital scarlet letter, we are rendered calculable, judged and labeled with a single glance. There is little we can do exonerate ourselves because the explanation is so much more complicated and less interesting than the accusation.
Already students polled in a variety of surveys confess that they are concerned with the privacy of their Facebook data and go to some lengths to protect it. They are woefully misinformed if they believe Facebook is good at keeping secrets.
Employers have admitted to rigorously surveying the Internet to find out as much about prospective employees that they can. Interns are often asked to “friend” interviewees, hoping to gain access to restricted profiles. Inappropriate YouTube videos of teenagers forever haunt the employment prospects of one-time Internet stars.
Even information that is ostensibly protected by Facebook is regularly leaked either through security holes in Facebook’s programming or through blatant abuse by third parties who use applications to gain access to information.
The CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, stated last year that he believed the age of privacy is dead and that society has evolved new norms of openness. He is right that privacy is slowly dying, but he is wrong about the cause. Social norms are changing because of technology like Facebook and Google, which have imposed their standards and technical sophistication on a largely naïve and stupefied public.
Perhaps we can collectively refuse to participate in social networks and reclaim our privacy. Such a solution is slowly becoming unworkable. Not having a Facebook profile only means that you are powerless to control what information others upload about you. Refusing an online presence is simply an invitation for every indiscretion to be tagged and chronicled without repudiation, and for every defamatory comment made by others to remain uncontested and thus all the more persuasive.
Insidiously, then, we are coerced into the volitional surrender of our own privacy. Facebook and Google are slowly becoming the masters of our own personas, dictating to us who we are and who we will forever be, rather than the other way around. The Internet is quickly becoming a method of control by which people are reduced to the behaviors and interests that are documented online. Our very being is slowly being mediated by the recorded habits and preferences that are stored in far-off databases and soon we will be judged for our data and for who we are.
Privacy is an essential human need: It is the lifeblood of individuality, a staple in human relationships, and it is the necessary condition for human dignity, yet it is slowly being dismantled by corporations who assure us that “social norms” are conveniently evolving in the direction that maximizes their profit. They insist that privacy is dead, but maintain trade secrets, patents, and copyrights.
I do not fear becoming the citizens of Oceania in Orwell’s “1984.” I fear a self-imposed despotism in which the beauty of human individuality is subjugated for political expediency. I fear a world in which our capacity for spontaneity, uniqueness, and originality is lost in the psychotic surveillance of our own mind. I fear being so afraid of constant judgment and correction that we turn ourselves into mundane interfaces, programmed to behave according to strict norms, to respond in a calculated and strategic manner, and to obey the sensitively-calibrated dictates of the future.
Perhaps the world would be a much safer place if we all behaved as if our mothers were looking over our shoulders. But then we’d never grow up.
— Evan DeFilippis, political science and economics junior
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stringbean 1 year, 4 months ago
Excellent article and very true. I especially agree with the 'scarlet letter' comparison. It's sad because taking a person's mistake and tagging it with their name indefinitely, does not really allow for something else vital to the human condition; redemption.
This is a good article you might enjoy and gives one options,
http://wiki.seeminglee.com/how-to-ungoogle-yourself
I especially like See Ming Lee's idea of creating alter egos with the same name. It's actually kind of funny and appropriate considering the circumstances. It takes advantage of the fact that one unsearchable place is the Dept. of Vital Statistics. Nobody can really know just how many people have the same name (even if it's an unusual one). Leaving the door wide open to create so many alter egos that the "real" you stays completely hidden in all the static, free to live a normal life.
academon 1 year, 4 months ago
Fantastic column
LauraGibbs 1 year, 4 months ago
Evan, I'd like to offer a different point of view. For people who have something to share and contribute with the world - for writers, poets, musicians, artists and also teachers - the Internet is an opportunity such has never existed before. Just look at Khan's Academy at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/khanacademy), for example, or to take an example of someone I know personally, look at the audio-video Latin courses offered by Evan Millner at YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/evan1965) or his long-running audio Latinum podcast (http://latinum.mypodcast.com/). Even my own Latin blog (http://bestlatin.blogspot.com/), while far less ambitious in scope than Evan's materials, has over a thousand email subscribers who are using the Internet to expand their learning world. If you Google me, you will find Latin, Greek, fables, folklore, all my course materials. My identity as a teacher in the online world is just as clear as it is on the university campus. Given the educational mission of the university, it seems to me that we should direct our attention to the question of how we can make the best use of the Internet for the purposes of teaching and learning. Teaching and learning don't have to take place in the privacy of the classroom but instead can take place publicly, online, free to all applicants willing to invest the time required. The university community could lead the way in the educational use of the Internet. Instead of bemoaning Facebook, why don't we show our academic mettle and make use of the Internet for better purposes? Instead of retreating into solipsistic privacy, why not create a public educational commons online? That, it seems to me, is how we can put away childish things and build a more meaningful world online. Non sibi soli sed et aliis, as the Latin saying goes.
evandefilippis 1 year, 4 months ago
@Professor Gibbs, I could not agree with you more. This wasn't in any way meant to sound like a neo-Luddite critique of the internet or technology. I love Wikipedia, the open-source revolution, the invention of e-books, Khan Academy etc., and I strongly believe we should strive to create a "Digital Library of Alexendria" for the new age.
My only concern was with how privacy abuses within the context of social networking will complicate those beneficial endeavors by erasing anonymity. Contributing to a Wikipedia page on Holocaust Denialism, for example, would be heavily problematized in a world where your identity was directly linked to your contribution. Same goes with leaking information to the press or expressing controversial opinions. There can be no growth or experimentation without some semblance of privacy.
@stringbean, Great, great, article. Thanks for the link.
LauraGibbs 1 year, 4 months ago
Got it, Evan - a digital Alexandria is very appealing indeed! I guess I was not sure how to read your highly charged rhetoric here re: privacy. Anonymity can serve some important purposes, and privacy may be an essential human need as you contend, but there is also a real need for a public space where we can share knowledge, "onymously" as it were, and I wish the university did more to contribute to that public learning space online, on the open Internet, instead of keeping course materials locked down behind password-protected walls of privacy.
schu8522 1 year, 3 months ago
Evan DeFilippis, I found your Flash USB drive in the Bizzell Library. Hopefuly you get this or someone else that knows you reads this and tells you. You may pick it up at the West Circulation desk.
-Katie Schulze OU Security Assistant.