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version seven. http://demongin.org |
IRL 2
Wherein I briefly discuss the big talking points surrounding Web 2.0, Millennials and the shifting definition of what constitutes privacy. Shortly thereafter, I paint myself into a moral corner and pout defiantly.
Monday, 2009-04-13 | Careerism, On the Internet, Politics, Social Studies
There has been no small amount of hay made in recent times over so-called "Millennials" (i.e. people born after 1981) and the fact that, unlike our forebears, our "private" lives and formative years have been vividly documented in iridescent Internet Technicolor on fully-public, intuitively-designed, easily-searched social networking and user content websites.
The standard article in mainstream media outlets reads something like this:
- Hey 20-somethings! I bet you thought that taking that phone-camera video of your blackberry-brandy-induced drunk dial to your ex where you half-drooled and half-mumbled your deepest, darkest secrets into your cell phone before breaking into your George Bush impression and declaring "war" on her by pantomiming assorted sex acts for the benefit of your chortling pals was really funny the morning after, but now it's two years later, you're looking for a job and every potential employer is also, thanks to the magic of Youtube, a potential viewer of that video. What to do?
- First, don't panic: there ways of reducing the Google-ability of such content: consider obfuscating search results with chipper-sounding blog posts describing how enthusiastic you are about the minutiae of your profession. Consider also sending emails to Youtube and Facebook: they might just consider pulling unsavory content (and every little bit counts).
- Second, learn from your mistakes and be more careful in the future: you're on the wrong side of a generational divide here, and the exhibitionism that comes naturally to you as a "digital native" most definitely does not come naturally to your parents' generation.
In Schneier's case, he uses the opportunity to make the point that the nature of "ephemeral conversation" is changing: in today's "always on" world where everyone's got a smart phone and every smart phone has a camera, the ability to tweet and instant access to the blogging software of your choice, ideas and expressions made "in passing" have a tendency to wind up in someone's database and thus to become permanent. Schneier goes on to make the case that this is a social issue and that as ephemeral conversation dies, the youth of today will adapt to this fact and establish new mores/standards for privacy, conduct, etc.
But not everyone is downplaying things so much. Larry Lessig, for example, took a different tack in Code (the first one) and, as was his tendency when he was still a legal eagle (and hadn't yet given up legal writing for his windmill-tilt at "political corruption" ...or whatever), he made the argument that private conversations, since they take place in a virtual "space", are protected by the Bill of Rights since the virtual "space" in which the conversation took place, regardless of who owns it, is protected by the Fourth Amendment.
And while I have yet to see Lessig address the problem of young people losing jobs because of salacious content that happened to pass before the eyes of a recruiter or HR person, my guess is that he would probably make the point that seemingly small battles over privacy are actually hugely fraught cultural fault lines and that they must be respected and navigated accordingly.
Basically, my thinking is that he wouldn't be nearly as nonchalant as Schneier and his interest in Constitutional law and theory would compel him to get a bit more worked up about what Bad Bruce essentially writes off as cultural "growing pains".
Other commentators, of course, have also used the urban legend of user-generated-content biting young people in the ass to make other, similarly broad points having to do with their own pet projects. It is not worth our time to dip our toes into some other great thinker's inkwell, however, as the proliferation of commentary is, to my way of thinking, more important in and of itself that any one person's article or point about the phenomenon. I would assert that the frequency of these articles means that commentators are being forced to account for a paradigm shift, and that's what's really noteworthy in all of this: as the generational gap grows and young people and old people hammer out a working agreement over where the line between public and private exists, the frequency of disagreements about where that line lies represents a paradigm-shift-in-progress.
We are active participants in history here.
But, when all of that big thinking is over and done, as a person who has generated no small amount of personal content, I have to come to terms with the fact that, as much as I'm actively participating in history, I'm also standing right on what appears to be an increasingly volatile fault line. And, while it is totally un-cool of me to admit it, I do occasionally have anxiety about the possibility that pictures of me at age 21 (riding a steel half-barrel like a nuclear warhead and shouting about learning to "love the Bomb" with a straw hat in one hand and a measuring cup of Kelly green Jell-o shots in the other) might someday disqualify me for a lucrative employment opportunity.
Just as often, however, I manage to take wing and fly with the Better Angels of our Nature--the ones who keep us from being consumed utterly by fear of the unknown and anxiety about the unknowable--and, rather than fretting over the potential fall-out of some race-/class-/gender-baiting essay I wrote on medieval Judaism and what really motivated Urban II to declare the First Crusade, I reflect on how well-documented my life has been and congratulate myself for having cloven and continuing to cleave to Ben Franklin's famous endorsement of obstinate insistence on self-determination: "those who would sacrifice security (i.e. the peace of mind that comes with expressing oneself unabashedly) for liberty (i.e. a well-paying job) do, in fact, deserve neither and, furthermore, are a bunch of punk ass chumps."
So, in closing, you could say I'm ambivalent on the topic. "Cautious optimism" would be going a step too far. So would "open-minded pessimism".
But I do know one thing for sure: regardless of whether I'm feeling anxious or obstinate about the possibility that some long-forgotten gaffe will disqualify me for some important employment opportunity, I am confident that ambivalence is preferable to the anxiety that comes with secrecy and with keeping secrets.
Because I hate lies. I hate them (as Iago famously described his "motiveless" hatred for the Moor) as I hate Hell Pains. And I am unwavering in my belief that secrecy and obscurity and disingenuous or misleading conduct--i.e. using the privacy tools, filters and settings--are not only meet to be condemned, but demand to be battled down. I simply won't abide the idea of a living double life or having a concealed identity because of the possibility that some wage slave might one day stumble upon a picture of me in a tattoo shop. For to do so, I believe, would be to have failed morally. More specifically, I believe that to do so would be to enter into the detestable (but sadly common) moral paradox wherein one admits to oneself that one's actions were so shameful or unacceptable that they should never had been committed in the first place, but to also simultaneously be unashamed about those actions, so long as they remain unknown to others.
And thanks to those moral certainties I have regarding the evils of intentionally misrepresenting myself and the systematic moral failure implied by feeling as though I must conceal my public actions, whenever I find that I am anxious about my professional prospects for the future, I find that I am also unafraid of judgment.
And moral indomitability and the freedom from fear are worth more to me than regular dental check-ups.
