Ramblings about Society in the 21st century

Posted on November 19th, 2009 in Travel.

So, yeah, this happens when i try to get to sleep once earlier than 4 am. I start to think. Weird stuff.

During some recent conversation with some grad students over a pint of beer, we came on the topic of privacy. As a disclaimer, i have to add that i’m normally a great supporter of privacy and am inherently cautious about anything that wants too much information from me or has any kind of commercial interest at it (yes, i’m looking at you, google).

However, something got me thinking: In a perfect world, no privacy was needed (because everybody would be good, or at least would be kept in a “good” state from continuous society perssure). And yes, i know we don’t live in a perfect world. I don’t get a mansion in the sky.

But, what happens in our not so perfect world? Most of us use some kind of online social-network. This allows all our friends to control us in some way. It wouldn’t stand me well if somebody posted to my facebook “wall” what kind of a horrible person I am. So I will probably try to be nice to people around me so that other people don’t realize what dick i really am. Well, wait, didn’t we have that above? The whole peer pressure to stay good thing.

Yes, granted, this is only true for my “friends”, and I can still be a dick around everybody else. But actually, I think that in this way, the lost pricacy of social networks actually adds to the moral of things. Or maybe it isn’t and i’m just a particularly bad person. Might well be…

 

One reply

  1. Geoff (blog author) says:

    Added on November 28th, 2009 at 15:10

    As promising as your theory might sound, I do find some flaws in it.
    Apart from the merely technical fact that you can erase negative comments from your wall on the social networks, one of the problems lies in the establishment of let’s call it pressure groups. Being mean to people who aren’t your friends may even be rewarded by your friends because they share the same opinion on some topics as you do, while the others do not.
    A evangelical guy would surely be praised by his buddies for being aggressive to some liberals who advocate birht control/same sex marriage/you name it. On another point of view, you would always be controlled by your friends and critizised when having a different oppinion. I am not saying that it will inevitably lead to some kind of Blockwart-mentality, but each one has the understanding, he controls everyone around him.

    The biggest mistake I see in your theory is, who defines what is “good”. Of course there are some aspects, we (hopefully) all can agree on, but on critical issues, there may be several different views with their own (good) arguments.
    By letting the public and the majority control all my utterances and oppinions(in a completely public and connected world) the minority will always be regarded as wrong.
    According to Rosa Luxemburg:
    „Freiheit ist immer Freiheit der anders Denkenden, sich zu äußern“
    (sorry, won’t translate it).

    I hope it doesn’t sound too culture-pessimistic. :)

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