end of privacy?

cameras
Originally uploaded by hanelifou.

I've been thinking a lot about
the end of privacy and the generational debate that it's sparking.

On one side you have young people spilling their every thought and detail
for the the world to see on community sites, in blogs and (increasingly) in
the on-campus porn magazines that seem to be popping up everywhere. Of
course Madonna was way ahead of this trend as far back as 1991 when she
released her sexual fantasies to the world with the book Sex, her life to
everyone with Truth or Dare and forced an exasperated Warren Beatty to frame
a debate still 15 years hence with this little outburst

"She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk. There's nothing to say
off-camera. Why would you say something if it's off-camera? What point is
there existing?"

So on one side we have 'the kids' asking What's the point if it can't get me
hits in You Tube

And on the other hside of the coin you have parental hysteria - either
wrapped in concerns over pedophile access to kids (imagine a day when every
kid has a camera in their bedroom and every pervert has access to the
machine that it's on... Ooops did we really buy Timmy a mac with built in
i-sight camera?)

Then there's the Orwellian objections being stirred by concerns such as this
(from today's newspaper)

"It is not entirely absurd to imagine that supermarkets' loyalty card data
might one day be used by the Government to identify people who ignored
advice to eat healthily, or who drank too much, so that they could be given
a lower priority for treatment by the NHS"

"With sensitive personal details readable over a distance, it could even
become possible with appropriate antennas and amplification, to construct a
bomb that would only detonate in the presence of a particular nationality or
even a particular individual."

As I said I'm not entirely sure where this is useful but it's splitting the
Western world across generational lines in a way that we haven't seen since
Punk and that's got to frame how we judge the ideas that we're having?

Personally I gave up on privacy years ago. Google me long enough and you'll
find pictures not just of me, my family, my various weights, beliefs,
disease history and hairstyles but pics of my innards (I have CT scans
posted), and of course my thoughts on the 2006 UK
panto season.