Privacy disappearing one status update at a time

By Adam Wakefield

One of the most cherished notions of a liberal society is that privacy is seen as a secondary right. While it doesn’t hold the weight of a natural right — since privacy is a notion manufactured by the technological advancement of our society — it is pretty important in democratic societies.

It is only since recent developments that the legitimacy of the personal sphere has become shaken, blurred by the intrusions (some of them willingly accepted by their victims) of technology. The internet is one such tool. Websites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook have become vessels for the public to willingly waiver the right to privacy. Celebrities from the world of arts, literature and sports now use Twitter as a means of generating publicity because they know there are people out there who place stock in what they are doing at this very moment in time.

Phil Hughes, the Australian opening batsmen who is 20 years old (very much of the now generation) posted on his Twitter feed that he had been dropped even before the team had been announced for the third Ashes Test against England in Birmingham. Andy Murray was keenly followed by the British public during Wimbledon. Without doubt it’s a tool now used by savvy publicists to get that little bit more of attention that isn’t available in the column inches of websites and pages. What does it say of people that they take an interest in what a person is doing within the limits of 120 characters? For the doomsayers it is further evidence that real news has been trivialised by content that distracts people instead of informing them. Are people becoming dumber or are they allowing themselves to be treated as dumber? A suspicion exists, from this perspective at least, that it is a little bit of both.

The rise of internet sociality, where human interaction is reduced to an absolute minimum, hasn’t just happened by itself. This effect has been coupled by the rampant Americanisation (a euphemism for commercialisation) of the bourgeois ethic. Granted, not everyone has been sucked in but how many people do you know, under the age of 30, who do not have a Facebook, Twitter or MySpace account? Not many, and their numbers will continually decline as the sheep effect takes hold and the few lone survivors fold so that they don’t suffer the FOMO (fear of missing out). MTV, that once mighty bastion of what’s hip and what’s not, plays less music videos than they used to in favour of “reality” content (another poorly disguised euphemism for constructed interaction: because the camera is there, it changes everything).

If the words above sound like the drums of doom, perhaps some measure is needed. Society as we know it hasn’t come crumbling down, but what is concerning is that we, as the body politic (the middle class anyway, since we are the ones who crave access to other people, middle class and richer) are slowly deconstructing the barriers of entry into our lives one brick at a time.

In this country, legislation was recently passed that if you have a SIM card, and therefore by relation a cellphone number, you must register it with the government.

The reasons for such a step are understandable from a practical point of view. More South Africans (most likely) own a cellphone than an ID book. Who knows … maybe in the future we won’t have ID numbers but rather when we are born, are designated a cellphone number because by the age of 16 you are more likely to own a cellphone. Besides, applying for an ID book takes four to five months with no guarantee of actually receiving the damn thing.

But doesn’t the idea seem a little off? Cellphones are intrusive enough as it is. World trade and commerce would come to a standstill if we weren’t able to get hold of one another when a computer isn’t nearby. An important part of any isolationist holiday theme is sending the laptop to the morgue and burying your cellphone under three metres of concrete. Going to the Transkei isn’t enough these days.

Through all this societal change, we still vigorously spit and foam at the prospect of the government infringing on our rights, finding the nearest lawyer to stick it to the “man” (or “woman”: there is no difference any more, which at least the feminists will be pleased about). But, as people are, there is a lot of hypocrisy going round when we complain of having a picture of a drunken escapade uploaded on Facebook while showing this rage by posting on someone’s “wall”. With celebrities being the new royalty, the new distraction from the everyday mundane, maybe we all crave a little bit of the spotlight for ourselves hence we as a society indulge in this binge of gloss and meaningless interaction.

You can have as many friends as you want on Facebook or have the masses follow you on Twitter, but when the sun sets, it is the face-to-face interaction with another person that truly defines and develops your relationship with that person. Thank God cyberspace can’t replace that, or the intimacy of human interaction. People want to get connected and are willing to pay the price of principle in favour of a slippery slope of influence swapped for privacy.

We are nowhere near the apocalypse of privacy, but on this current course who knows what’s possible. I better post this so people know …