It is true that you have separate chapters treating corporations, individuals and government. But is it also true that most of the early chapters slide between the examples, using examples from all three areas without recognizing their important differences.

It is also true that the quote on 127 is Eric Schmidt, but it is also pretty clear that you are agreeing with him, supporting his opinion that privacy is overhyped.

(More later, perhaps . . .)

Thank you for taking such time and thoughtful effort with the book.

We disagree less than you think about the central issue of control. I make it clear that we as individuals must have control and that control — of our privacy — must be protected. But then I urge people to consider the choices they have with that control: to be public or not. I argue the benefits of the former choice in balance with the latter. I do not suggest that anyone should be forced into the public (thus, my family); I do not condone forcing anyone into the public (see my discussion about gays and lesbians and publicness as the chosen weapon of many); I do not suggest that everything in my life is or should be public (thus the section of the book on those things I hold private). I’m simply arguing for considering the choices. That requires control.

It’s also important to point out that I do not view the publicness of individuals, corporations, and governments in the same light; that is why I deal with each separately. Yes, governments, I say, should be transparent by default and secret by necessity (and I include as necessary secrets matters of security, criminal investigations, some cases of diplomacy and, importantly, citizens’ privacy). Companies, I argue, would be better off being more public so that they have the opportunity to collaborate with their customers earlier in their processes — and now, they can be. Those are different cases from individuals. That’s why I spend so much time looking at the choices we have as individuals. Again, I strongly advocate having choice and control.

But I reject control alone as a satisfactory definition of privacy (as it is held by Zuckerberg, among others). Indeed, as you say, I found it difficult to find a satisfactory definition (including Solove’s, though I respect his work and learned a great from him; that’s why I quote him but I also disagree with his definitions). I came to frame privacy as an ethic of knowing someone’s information and what you do with it (and publicness as an ethic of sharing your own information if it could do others good). Out of that ethic of privacy comes a list of proper behaviors (e.g., do not steal someone’s information; treat it securely….) that I explore. Again, individual control is a critical element of privacy; there we agree.

We also agree that what we are really doing now is adjusting not only our definitions of privacy and publicness but also, of course, our norms, mores, and practices around them because of the changes brought on by technology. That’s why this discussion is important, I believe, as we consider our choices. Dangerous? I don’t think so. This discussion is precisely why I wrote the book. So I am grateful we are having it.

I’m sorry that we disagree about other matters but, as I say, I appreciate the careful thought and time you put into your analysis.

A few minor points: The quote you cite on page 127 is Eric Schmidt’s, not mine. I do think that Brandeis and Warren did have their hackles up about the press. Perhaps I’m more sensitive to that as a journalist. When they call unauthorized circulation of people’s portraits “the evil invasion of privacy by the newspapers,” I start fearing a regime of prior restraint. But again, I’m sensitive to the point. And the reason I include net neutrality as one of the principles I propose at the end, as I hope I made clear, is as a means of protecting the internet as our tool of publicness, the means by which we can all speak and gather and act. If we allow that tool to be limited by, among other threats, violating net neutrality, then the power of that tool is compromised. Oh, one more: As for Josh Harris: I was trying to leave it to the reader to decide what they thought of his experiments and views; I presented him as the extreme case.

BTW, as for the hypocrisy of writing a book about sharing instead of just sharing it, see Megan Garber on the point and my response and confession (links here: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/10/24/book-as-process/)

Obviously, we could continue this at length. But I’ll leave it there again, with thanks for your thoughtful discussion.

- jeff

Obviously the classic anti-power movements would primarily be the Anarchist ones of the past several centuries, with their attempts to simply destroy the entire construct of power, rather than replacing it with a new one.

As a political science student it is this discussion of Democracy and Stability which is the real hazy edge of the whole question being posed. The biggest problem lies in the fact that nobody really knows what a Good democracy looks like, nor even agrees on what it is Supposed to look like. The debate in almost all democracy circles is this exact question, in essence. The fundamental trade-off between stability and participation.

Amongst existing democratic states this argument is constantly being fought, between those who see First-Past-the-Post electoral systems as more Stable than systems of proportional representation. Between those who see two-party systems as more likely to yield ‘safe’ stable majority governments, rather than messy coalition ones. There is little agreement in the study of democracies over what the Actual effects of these different systems have on the stability of a government (if any), and what a desirable government would even look like.

Most democracies historically have opted for Stability over participation, and I honestly think that we are seeing a backlash against that in these anti-power movements. People desire a more participatory democracy, one open to access to all citizens and groups. But the truth is that we don’t have a good idea of what that kind of democracy would look like yet. There are no real contemporary examples of a really distributed inclusive structure for social authority. I do think that social media is forcing its invention however.

From my point of view social media is recreating a sensation of public dialogue. Of engaging with one’s fellow citizens on topics of collective importance without the medium of human institutions. Instead technical ones allow people to connect immediately and as an aggregate. Obviously this is extremely destabilizing to the media that used to exist to stopgap this lack. Governments, and many other centralized mediums, are no longer seen as needed to represent the interests and discourses of a Public which is self-aware and able to represent itself to itself as individuals.

But as you say, the endgame of this change in the way a people represent their interests as an aggregate is far from evident. However I think that a period of instability will be crucial in allowing the creative space in the public sphere for new power structures to emerge, for experimentation to occur and for individuals to discover what it is that they want to be a part of. Because that is what it is going to be about in the future. People are increasingly skilled at saying what they Don’t want to be a part of, now they need to decide what it is they Do want to be a part of before anything will be able to concretize and create new structures that will accommodate the new human agency we’re discovering.

I really want to bring back this point about Baudrillard though, because I have only recently been initiated into him and feel like there is still an important role for his theories to play in theorizing the web today. The important thing that I see in Baudrillard’s writings is that, while he Is writing about the Virtual and Simulacra, these things are not separate in any way from a Real. The really radical thing that he is saying is that the Real is Virtual, that the two are indistinguishable. That the ‘digital’ realm was only possible because the ‘real’ had already been digitalized. That to me overlaps perfectly with the point you are making here.

The only other comment I would make is on the distinction between meatspace and cyberspace. I understand and fully agree with your argument that the two cannot be considered or theorized as Separate spaces, as in autonomous. However I do think it’s important to not lost sight of their, still important, differences. Bits and Atoms are very different constitutive stuffs, and the human animal does deal with the information coming from each in different ways. They might not be autonomous, but they are still differentiatable for now.

Anyway, quibbles aside, excellent article! Thanks for such a concise statement of really clear and important facts.

Referencing a class discussion in which we identified why suicides aren’t publicized (might have been w/”Premediation”), I’m now considering that there’s something similar about the situations. Like not calling suicides by their name publicly, maybe the lone gunman narrative intentionally sets the “crazies” apart so that others aren’t inspired to do the same.

I heard a segment on NPR that referenced this study: http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac/ntac_jfs.pdf. The Secret Service that looked at 83 would-be or successful assassins of high-profile individuals, most of which were political figures. The study points out that most people motivated to act this way were not specifically motivated by anything political. Most just wanted to be famous or to be heard.

So, if the US has witnessed increased levels of “lone gunmen” acting out to make national statements, maybe it’s a sign of an increased structural disenfranchisement and personal feelings of isolation (exponentially factored by the resources, an echo chamber effect and accessibility provided by the Internet), not because Sarah Palin used gunsights on her website (or not *only* because).

If we accept that this might be true, the irony might be that, while labeling these murderers as crazy *may* lessen the response of others to empathize and do the same, labeling may also delegitimize the issue and cut off a more appropriate response.

Maybe we SHOULD treat the mob as an individual (see: “The People”). As citizens become increasingly networked, politicians will only sow more discontent and distrust with their carefully-worded public addresses that let millions of people read into the message in very predictable ways. That’s dangerous, but the unpredictable ways in which people read into things are far more dangerous.

From your last line, any idea what types of interventions a mob requires?

If your interested, I wrote about this several months ago:

http://www.digitaltonto.com/2010/small-acts-of-courage-and-revolution/

As for technology, it’s not an accident that new technologies play a role in all revolutions. The incumbent regimes generally have a lock on established media outlets, so would be revolutionaries so have to look for alternatives.

Interestingly, in both Ukraine in 2004 and Egypt in 2011, fraudulent video was shown on TV misrepresenting what was going on in the respective squares that formed the focal point of protest.

Clearly, when faced with state controlled media, alternative modes of communication (fax machines, internet forums, SMS and social media) are extraordinarily useful.

- Greg

Indeed cutting the hardware at the point the Egyptian government did might actually exacerbate the problem, depriving people of what they see to be a substantial public good

In looking at how a Congressman used Twitter, I found that when he suspected that he might be banned from using the service, he immediately reacted as if Twitter itself was a fundamental force for democracy, and if his access to it were cut off that this would be a grave trampling of his free speech. This response came less than three months after he started using the service. It seems that changes in communication affect our expectations for what that communication should be like very, very quickly.