Personal Privacy?

“The problem is that we don't know what they know, and cannot be sure that their information is correct, or become aware of the kinds of decisions that are based upon it.” Felix Stalder

Surveillance is a scary term. It has become a word synonymous with privacy invasion, spying, and even creeping. Felix Stalder composes an argument in his article “Privacy is not the Antidote to Surveillance” that surveillance has its ups and downs. On one hand, it is a source of great convenience for us. Meanwhile the information that is constantly being collected on us has become a commodity that can be bought and sold by marketing companies. Either way, he illustrates how it is virtually impossible to escape. Upon reading this article, one may become increasingly frustrated with the way in which information is constantly being collected and sold to various sources in order to turn a profit. My question is, why does this make us angry?

The demographic of 15-30 year olds seem to be so willingly transparent. Lets take this new iPhone app I ready about on The NY Times technology blog. The application is called “Marco” (after the childhood game Marco-Polo). It was created to help people find each other using GPS technology. I do not think that most people would find this app shocking in the least; however, present it to my parents and their friends and they would probably be disturbed by our willingness to ‘lay it all out there’.

As Stalder notes, when we use these types of applications, we think of the immediate gratifications, rather than its overall society effect. Personally I have never been scared of the looming idea of ‘big brother’ watching us all- because I have never felt that I had anything that needed to be hidden. Before reading this article I had a rather ego-centric perspective on the idea of surveillance- but Felix Stalder has certainly helped me to reposition my perspective.