The End of Privacy

It's all around. Youtube, facebook, myspace. More and more, people put their personal and private lives up on the internet for anyone to see. Names, dates, locations, beliefs, thoughts, secrets, shames, prejudices, and so on. And this is OK now, where a generation or two before it was shameful to talk about a lot of the things people now post as everyday blogs. So where is this leading us?

Can it be that the airing of all of one's innermost thoughts is a benefit to society? Could it be that breaking down these walls and opening up is a way to combat racism, sexism, bigotry, and other exclusionary and "negative" tendencies of the human race? Because that is what truly opening up might lead to. Realizing that deep down, we are all the same, part of the same spaceship soaring through the dark of space. Living together in harmony and yada yada.

Probably not.

So how will this affect life aboard a spaceship, where you have a limited population and set schedules? It will probably show itself as society did in small towns, with similar circumstances - little contact with other areas, self sustained communities.

Surveillance Society

We live in a surveillance society. This is not news. At least, it shouldn't be - cameras have been around since 1826, and the concept goes back a thousand years (around 1015). And the concept of spying goes back even farther - the origins of secretly listening in on someone's conversation probably goes back to the prehistoric age, where Blarg was positive that Urg was hoarding some mammoth meat and he wanted to catch out his rival.
But what does it mean, really, to be surveilled in this day and age? Even right now, as I type this entry, my words are being autosaved in a database whose location and purpose I know not. Sure, it's probably innocuous enough. But in reality, anything you do on the internet is logged somewhere, and for some completely unrelated reason, could be brought to see the light of, erm, day? I say that because it's more like light of some office where a beurocratic type is pulling the information in his cubicle, a la Office Space. But digression aside, Youtube recently had to give up records of user's viewing in a lawsuit with Viacom. Which means every copyrighted movie blurb, every NFL game clip, every troubled youth clip watched in the supposed privacy of one's own home, can be laid bare for the world to see.

Not only this, but cameras are everywhere now. Stoplights, street corners, stores, all under the watchful eye of...who? Elected officials, government workers, corporate security guards, store clerks. There was a great movie that was really ahead of it's time, "Enemy of the State", that showed some amazing technology for it's time (1998) but was probably available at least in concept then, and fully operational today (if not even more advanced). Another quick aside, Gene Hackman plays a character very similiar to a character he played in "The Conversation" , a surveillance movie from 1974 that was likewise ahead of it's time.

So what does this mean for us? Do we just gracefully bow down and allow the surveillance to continue? Should it? Why not? If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you don't have to worry, right?