Clunky Flow

I was asked to speak at a Darklight symposium. I must admit I wasn’t sure if I could afford the time. I’m at a sensitive time with my business, you see. I was told the talk was on privacy. I was like. Oh in that case. I should. Then I heard that the keynote was by Daniel Solove. And I was like “Are you kidding!?” “Why didn’t you say that in the first place!”

The thing is there’s a load of old rubbish talked about privacy. Its nobody fault really. Its just that people often find they are talking at cross purposes. The problem is that we all think we know what privacy is. That is until we are asked to define it. It then it turns out that nobody can. And that everyone has a half-baked opinion.

The situation always reminds me of the story of the blind men and the elephant

Six blind men were asked to determine what an elephant looked like by feeling different parts of the elephant’s body. The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant is like a pillar; the one who feels the tail says the elephant is like a rope; the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is like a tree branch; the one who feels the ear says the elephant is like a hand fan; the one who feels the belly says the elephant is like a wall; and the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is like a solid pipe. Discussions begin but each man is so sure that his own experience is definitive that the discussion goes nowhere or devolves into an argument of almost religious proportions.

A wise man steps forward and explains to them: All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently is because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all the features you mentioned.

In discussions on Privacy, Daniel J. Solove is your wise man. He has stepped back and taken on the task of defining what privacy is and why it is important. Its a huge task. A task of heroic proportions. But he has succeeded in creating the definitive work on the subject.

So what happened at the talk?

Well. I got to meet and speak on a panel with man who performed that heroic task. But to my chagrin he chose not to talk about it!

Instead he chose to cover topics in the book he published late last year (and now available for free download) “The Future of Reputation”. The collections of stories he has collated in this book are very entertaining and illustrative of the modern reality in which social information can whizz around the world in ways we have difficulty comprehending and continue to be surprised by. It was a great talk.

It looks like I’ll just have to wait another while until he tours his latest, hot off the press, ground breaking book Understanding Privacy“.

There was a huge turnout. Especially impressive at 10am on a workday, the morning after the Darklight folks had had their launch party. Daithí Mac Sithigh of lexferenda has posted a pretty comprehensive review here.

Daithi was one of the many perceptive and well-informed experts sitting in the audience. I know this because he managed to take the raw material of what I actually said. And translate it into the ideas that I was trying to articulate.

I had another go at it here in this post “Is Facebook this generation’s Amity Island? (The Setting for Jaws)

Another smart guy in the audience was Bill McDaniel a guy who later talked on the “Future of the Internet” panel. The truth is that there entire audience was bristling with intelligence and my only real regret is that the format of a panel separated from the expert audience is not always the best way to bring forth the ideas in the room.

The diverse panel itself was chaired by digital rights expert Caroline Campbell and also featured journalist Jim Carroll, Hotline.ie director Cormac Callanan and the irrepressible Damien Mulley blogging tour de force and man of many titles including professional shit stirrer and media whore.

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