I HEAR YOU, BIG BROTHER

“By drastically expanding the scope of freely available information, the Internet has fundamentally altered the concept of privacy as well as how people form opinions of anything and, perhaps more significantly, anyone. The proliferation of blogs, online forums, and social media has created a space for fruitful exchanges of information between people across the globe. While readers often take what they find seriously, such content should not always be considered at face value. When it comes to information about people, the Internet and search engines often call up information that is private, untrue, or out of context.”

This quotation is from an article by Deanna Glick on AOL entitled “Weiner Provides Valuable Lesson About Online Privacy”. It rings true to me,

As one of the “proliferation of blogs” types she mentions, the article caught my attention. Anyone who has read my blogs has seen me decry the loss of privacy in the cyberworld, especially in the form of the social networks. I am an old fogy who refuses to join the world of Facebook and Twitter because of these privacy concerns. I have family and friends who are in the social networks, and I understand it’s a good way to keep up or rekindle friendships, but it is not for me. I’ll find other ways, thank you, to keep up with friends or refind old ones.

The world of the computer and the internet have put us in a new and exciting Age of Information. In the future when history is written, or whatever the future form of communication will be, we will be part of this Age of Information, just as people in the nineteenth century were part of the Age of the Industrial Revolution. It has created miracles and wonders for our lives. But with every blessing comes the flipside, and ours is loss of privacy.

All kinds of weirdos are out there: horny, frustrated, venomous, lonely---you choose the adjective---and they want the world to know it. It is a cry of frustration or a plea for attention. Look at Representative Weiner, a man of intelligence and ability, who has just screwed up his life by exposing himself, literally and figuratively, by his email “mistake”. On the net, you can’t take back your mistakes, as he so grievously discovered.

George Orwell in “1984” described “Big Brother”, the super-tyrant who controls our lives. In the cyberworld Big Brother lurks, and we all hear his footsteps too close and too often. Privacy is our last refuge. Let’s keep the door locked when we hear those footsteps.