Privacy Today: Just A Matter of Controlling Your Personal Brand?
It is commonly assumed by many in the digital age that privacy is one of several moral ideas that has become impossible to sustain, because of the transparent and porous characteristics of our communications technologies. As a result, perhaps, many have come to believe that privacy is no longer a necessary part of our individual or collective well-being.
Sure, there are many privacy advocates out there fighting to keep governments, corporations, marketers, families, friends, enemies and strangers from collecting, storing, exploiting, profiting and mining information that most people don't want circulating in the known world, among them: their medical and genetic stories, their sex lives, their DUIs, their grades at school and at work and their checkbook balances. But it seems just as sure, these privacy special forces are fighting a futile cause, and that soon we will begin to regard them, fondly, as living the gesture life.
So, give us a gesture. Or more than that. Tell us about privacy in your world. Is it no longer a necessary part of what we might think is the good life? The life well-lived and all that?
A few people think that it is not so much privacy that is vital to people living in a digital age. Instead, what is most vital to well-being is to be able to control how you come across to others, how you present yourself and brand yourself. And equally important, who gets to know about you. This, for example, is what social-network expert danah boyd (yes, like the poet, e.e.cummings, she presents herself in lowercase), has said.
On this site, we have been very intrigued about the various ways in which famous artists, such as musicians and actors, control their own images. Mostly, we have wondered why artists, who have done morally despicable actions, such as wife-killing, get off the moral hook... and why then it's the beauty and virtue of their work that makes them morally exceptional.
What if everyone, and not just celebrities (whose efforts are not always successful), gained complete control over the way they present themselves? What would the consequences be?
Would this create a new kind of privacy? One where privacy would not be regarded as good for your well-being, but actually as bad for you?
Ethics and Privacy: Maintaining Public and Private Selves
For centuries, the concept of private and public selves has been an integral part of many cultures--most notably those of Europe. But the practice of self-protection, of cherishing the personal, of deliberately separating one's public and private lives, hasn't been limited to other continents. Generations of Americans have also believed in--and treasured--a fundamental "right" not explicitly defined in the Constitution: the right to be left alone.
Unfortunately, in our digital age, choosing to be left alone inevitably means choosing to be left behind. Which tends to be isolating, alienating. And certainly not an option for those of us with careers to build and responsibilities to fulfill.
Suddenly, it seems, over-exposure has become the norm--an essential part of the endless cycle of self-promotion. Social networking sites such as Facebook, with their promise of constant communication and meaningful connection, can deteriorate into online popularity contests where individuals trade daily experiences and even occasional secrets for a few seconds of public attention. Bloggers vie for adulation and, in some cases, ad dollars. Marketers devise endless strategies for encouraging self-disclosure, separating us from the closely held facts of our lives and adding to their data troves.
For an individual, the results can be diminishing--an impoverishment of the self, which becomes diffuse and thin. But the outcomes can also be dangerous, as seen in the increasing number of young people who are inadvertently sabotaging their future careers by a lack of cyber-discretion. (Worth noting: at least one major American law school has implemented programs intended to educate and warn students about the consequences of excessive online candor.)
So although the concept of "branding" oneself may be distasteful--even to those of us trained in the art of marketing communications--it's necessary. And ethical. Somehow, through constant vigilance, we have to find a way to be present and yet not-present in the webworld, available and yet not overly accessible. Somehow, we need to leverage the advantages of a cyber presence without giving all of our self away. Somehow, we have to resist the siren song and remember that our essence, our who-we-are-ness, is worth cherishing, cultivating, protecting and, yes, sharing. But selectively.