Clunky Flow

People misunderstand privacy all the time. Sinead O’Cochrane seemed to experience the recent symposium as scaremongering. While I experienced it as low key and leavened with humour.

I’d love to think it rose to the energy levels fit for a scaremongering label but it just doesn’t stick for me. I was first of the panel to speak and my first words were a reminder that its important not to focus on the negative side and to remember there is much that is positive in online interaction.

I then said that “Whatever goes on the internet stays on the internet” Mostly because there’s a story in the paper everyday of people being surprised at some outcome of this reality. Even though it would seem naive for anyone to think otherwise, people continue to be shocked. Everyday.

Also Daniel’s keynote talk focused on stories that had humurous connotations as opposed to the many more numerous stories that have tragic endings.

Damien Mulley quickly opened the talk up to the audience and it was clear that this was the stuff that was on their collective minds. As I said in this post, talks on privacy have a habit of going round in circles with nobody getting much satisfaction.

Ask someone if they care about privacy by using that abstract term and they will shrug. Ask them how they feel about someone tracking their every move and they’ll admit that it makes them feel a little bit

uneasy. Ask them about…and they’ll ask wide-eyed ‘that doesn’t happen does it?’. Ask them would they consider changing their behaviour and they’ll shrug in a way that you can almost hear them thinking ‘it’ll never happen to me’ or ‘i can’t imagine why anyone would bother’ or ‘I’ve got nothing to hide’.

Unfortunately, the symposium never really got its teeth into the key issues surrounding privacy other that to marvel at how little of it there is online. But for those interested, this is the publication that first brought Daniel Solove to my attention as someone who HAS something interesting to say on the subject.

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