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Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_
From: |
Story Henry |
Subject: |
Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_ |
Date: |
Sat, 10 Apr 2010 18:32:48 +0100 |
> Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
> *** Putting privacy and free speech in the same pot sounds to me like
> a counter-revolutionary attack on both privacy and free speech. It
> seems to say: you cannot have privacy if you have free speech, and you
> cannot have free speech if you have privacy. I wonder when this
> dichotomy appeared, but I relate it to the general trends in warfare
> speech that says "Either you're with us, or against us" and the
> marketing-fascist trend of pushing transparency at all price, "because
> you don't have anything to hide."
>
> Free speech in these terms, has become an advertisement for "I can say
> anything I want, especially gossip that lifts the dirty veil of
> secrecy you maintain about your private life". The panopticon of
> paparazzi.
I very much agree with your comments.
One way I think one can better defend the issue is by looking at the issue in
terms of meaning. Free speech and privacy are in important respects issues of
language and meaning. So if I get some time to develop this in more detail, I
would start from the theory of speech acts [0]. The meaning of what you say
(and what you publish) is not determined just by the content, but also by the
attitude of the sayer, and who that sayer/publisher is.
So you can say something seriously, or you can joke about it, or you can doubt
it, .... Those are just a few of the very many different attitudes one can have
when saying something. Confusing them leads to stupid things like the man who
was recently arrested for a twitter joke [1].
When people listen in to conversations not intended for them, they are not
listening in on a conversation they can necessarily understand. Or the other
way around: if everyone has to have a conversation as if one unknown huge and
not necessarily very intelligent agent were listening, many speech acts that
could take place, won't take place. At the very least this slows down the
ability to think critically, and so the ability of a society to respond
intelligently to problems. Imagine for example that we are developing a game to
help people work through the consequences of social policies on drug handle,
war, poverty, etc... Many things will be said very realistically in such
situations which a listener may not understand as being hypothetical. But
furthermore it won't be at all effective, as those who really do have a
destructive mission will use language that will seem innocuous.
As a result a paranoid listener will end up suspecting everybody: there is
nothing else he can do. And very soon we are in the same situation as that
described by the film "The life of Others" [2] which described the situation in
East Germany before the wall came down. What the film shows very well, is how
this type of setup is of course easy to corrupt, and in fact ends up creating
the resistance it was trying to stop. The problem now is that we have a lot
more powerful tools to do the spying than the east germans had.
Inversely if you say something in public you are then opening yourself to the
very rich criticism you can get for what you say, but also from the very great
work by others you can build upon. This can be both painful, and of course very
enriching, as we know in the free software movement.
On 10 Apr 2010, at 17:36, Rob Myers wrote:
> On 10/04/10 16:47, Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
>>
>> When designing social software, and thinking about these issues, one
>> has to be careful with terms and concepts.
>
> Do you have a good example of a positive conceptual framework for
> thinking about social software?
It is not that difficult to get things going. What you need is at its most
basic:
1- ownership of your publishing infrastructure
2- ability to access control who sees what
You need 1 so that you can really be sure that 2 does not contain more people
than you bargained for. You can do that with foaf+ssl
http://esw.w3.org/Foaf%2Bssl/FAQ
On that you can then build a lot more, such as rules perhaps on how you
allow people to distribute content, and what they have to do when distributing
it (eg: cite your name, if they don't change it, ...)
Henry
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_acts
[1]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7016266/Man-arrested-under-Terrorism-Act-for-Doncaster-airport-Twitter-joke.html
[2] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, (continued)
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Simon Fondire-Teitler, 2010/04/05
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Ian Denhardt, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Jason Self, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Rob Myers, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Story Henry, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Matija Šuklje, 2010/04/07
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Story Henry, 2010/04/07
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Matija Šuklje, 2010/04/08
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Hellekin O. Wolf, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Rob Myers, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_,
Story Henry <=
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Matija Šuklje, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, elijah, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Story Henry, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Matija Šuklje, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Melvin Carvalho, 2010/04/10
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Ian Denhardt, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Odin Omdal Hørthe, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Rob Myers, 2010/04/06
- Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Story Henry, 2010/04/07
Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_, Ted Smith, 2010/04/06