Abstracting Privacy, Part 3

On a visit to Boston in the 1980s, I saw an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts of historical and cultural artifacts from medieval Japan. The exhibit, on loan from a Japanese museum, contained spectacular kimonos, screens, ceramics and calligraphy instruments. It also included a display of armor and weaponry, including swords from some of the most renowned sword smiths of the period. Even though the swords were hundreds of years old they were national treasures, and as pristine as if they had been commissioned that very day. Several thoughts came to mind all at once: the legendary craftsmanship of the samurai sword maker; the fact that even at rest inside a glass display case, the weapons’ brilliant ergonomic curvature and plainly visible sharp edges combined to imply (if not demand outright) an act yet to be completed; and, also that these were some of the most beautiful killing machines ever created. Then it became apparent that there are essentially two ways to regard such an object: to imagine using it, or to imagine having it used against you. To simply regard it as extraordinary metallurgy or the highest expression of a set of design principles doesn’t take full account of what it actually is.

I’m often reminded of that museum visit as I think about our digital-technological future. As we benefit from and enjoy our connectedness via digital technologies — the internet, global positioning systems, social media, texting, etc. — we would do well to remain mindful of what it actually is. Most Americans have by now had the experience of entering their address into Google Earth and seeing a satellite photo of their address appear instantly on the computer monitor. As unsettling as the experience was for me, even more troublesome was how recent the images were. On one occasion it was seeing where I had parked my car the day before — not my usual parking spot because I got to my office building later than usual. Another time it was seeing the brand new roof on my home, finished just days earlier. Even though Google is a private company and is not as far as we know in collusion with the government (at least not in this country), such an experience as the one described above gives a glimpse into a surveillance infrastructure that would have been the fondest dream of the Stasi, the KGB or Hoover’s FBI. And even though some communities abroad have taken exception to Google Maps cataloguing their every street, intersection and traffic light, the overall impression one gets is that to object is to swim against the tide. But even though there’s obviously no turning back, perhaps it is still worthwhile to be circumspect, and take full account of this new reality.

Abstracting Privacy (contd.)

Perhaps the mere illusion of privacy is sufficient to put some Americans’ minds at ease. In our post-911 world we seem to have been especially eager to sacrifice civil rights and civil liberties in exchange for guarantees against terrorist acts in the future. We are for the most part willing, for example, to disrobe in airport security lines because we’re given to understand that such scrutiny reduces the chances of a would-be terrorist smuggling a firearm, an edged weapon or a foundation-garment explosive device aboard the aircraft.

Public opinion is considerably more mixed on the issue of electronic surveillance, warrantless wiretaps, etc., than government officials and security experts would have us believe. But whatever unease exists is apparently easily overwhelmed by the imperatives of communicating with each other across time zones, continents and oceans in a timely manner.

Given the aggressive, open-ended nature of the national security/counter-terrorism apparatus — an expression of what historian, author and retired career Army officer Andrew Bacevich calls the “national security state” — it is perhaps understandable that its less visible iterations would be regarded with the kind of insouciance that can apparently cause people to forget altogether that an electronic communication always — always — leaves a trail. Or that striking the “Delete” key doesn’t remove all instances of an email or text. Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, for instance, was removed from office and ultimately served jail time because he seemed not to understand this simple but apparently elusive truth.

Further, if human nature and the history of statecraft remain true to form, there is the promise (or omen) of even less respect for privacy in the future. At one time not so long ago, airport security consisted primarily of being scanned with a hand-held metal detector. The current state of the art is a full body scanner that many Americans — women especially — regard as a totally unjustifiable invasion of privacy. Yet we continue to fly.

Abstracting Privacy

Abstracting Privacy

The early discussions that led to the upcoming March 28, 2012 Symposium (and this blog) focused a great deal of attention on the differences between generations in how they engage with — and with each other through — digital technologies, social media and the like. People of middle school age can hardly if at all imagine a world without Facebook, text messaging and instant downloads. Conversely, I know someone in her 80s who was enraptured by Skype, saying that using it made her feel like she was living in a “Star Trek world.”  Between those generational poles lie the rest of us, who will determine whether the best or the worst of the digital revolution will predominate. Privacy, for example, might have evolved (or devolved) to become something between an anachronism and a false hope.

During the 2002 manhunt for Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammad and his minor accomplice (or first victim) Lee Boyd Malvo, law enforcement’s public statements included the confident assertion that surveillance video from convenience stores, gas stations and other retail establishments would lead them to the killer (at that time not knowing that there was more than one). It was reported that Americans are captured on video surveillance cameras many times a day. Estimates ranged from ten to two hundred. The tone of such reporting was reassuring — after all, a murderer was at large. But the 10-to 200-video-captures-per-day datum was nevertheless chilling in its own right: The surveillance infrastructure, which ultimately did play a significant role in the capture of the two shooters, remains, and is a great deal more pervasive ten years later. And for the aforementioned middle-schooler, she is no doubt entering her adolescence without even the expectation of privacy. It seems that almost daily there are new revelations concerning the tracking of online browsing behavior, deliberately obscure opt-out — rather than opt-in — privacy policies, and cookies that circumvent a computer operating system’s security protocols. But there is little if any scandal associated with such revelations. It is entirely possible, it seems to me, that by the time our middle-schooler’s cohort become our society’s judges, lawyers, physicians, law enforcement officials, warriors and politicians, even the word “privacy,’” and everything it contains, may only be remembered by historians and lexicographers.

In the meantime, however, we’re constantly reminded of our imperfect understanding of whatever privacy remains. Whether it is a married politician posting half-naked pictures of himself to someone he has only met online, a young co-ed posting her sexual exploit portfolio, or a judge posting a highly impolitic “joke” in an email, there seems to be a fundamental lack of awareness about the realities of cyberspace. In these and other such instances, the actors aren’t middle-schoolers, but adults (at least chronologically) who shouldn’t require being reminded of the adage, “If you wouldn’t put it on a post card, don’t put it in email.”

To be continued.

Richard Robeson

The work of developing new rules

            We’re thinking in this blog about the nature of the changes we are embracing, and/or are being imposed upon us, by the advent of the digital technologies. 

            One observation about all new technologies seems obvious:  they are neither good nor evil.  They simply represent a new kind of power, and as such are always used by human beings for both what we define as good and what we define as evil.  That means that at the advent of any new technology, we are faced with an obligation to figure out as best we can how to maximize the good and minimize the evil effects—provided we can figure out (and develop a consensus on) what those are.

            The examples are too obvious to belabor.  Trains and then automobiles changed the world—and have also killed a large number of people.  Movies and television have allowed great works of art—and also produced tidal waves of dreck.  Cell phones have already saved many lives . . . and trashed a number of marvelous concerts, films and academic classes, and caused tragic traffic accidents.

            My concern is that we be intentional about developing manners and mores around new technologies, rather than simply allowing them to coalesce.  The current controversy over phone calls while driving (I hope the texting controversy is nearly settled!) is an example of those new efforts.

            The thoughtless boor in line at the bank or grocery store who either holds up the process because s/he doesn’t notice what’s going on, or broadcasts intimate details to innocent victims who don’t want to hear them—may well have never had the chance to learn about the impact of these behaviors on others. None of us inherited a set of expectations about how those phones should be handled—because the phones simply weren’t there when we or our parents were small. 

            I gained a fresh (and chilling) understanding of one of the primary functions of the proliferation of cell phones when I saw a billboard that read, “Unlimited ‘whereyats’.” 

            The naïve young woman who allows her beloved to take intimate pictures of her on his cell phone may trust his assurances of intimate confidence—and not yet have discovered how many other young women have found their images floating around the world before they knew it was happening.

            It’s not just identity thefts that impact our lives in negative ways.  Creative criminals keep finding new tools, such as “phishing” scams and RFID digital theft.  And many people still don’t grasp that what the text of a link in an e-mail says may have no relationship to the actual cyberlink behind it.

            Intellectual property theft is obviously a huge economic and moral issue.  If I buy a cheap knock-off from China of an expensive American product, is that act immoral?  Or ethically neutral?  The theoretic answer often looks very different from the answer being acted out in the marketplace.

            And at a less financially risky level, Meryl Streep’s 2009 film, “It’s Complicated,” gives a hilarious (but blood-chilling) example of the danger of a Skype session gone awry—and it’s completely believable as a real-life relationship disaster, the happy ending notwithstanding.

            It’s incumbent on me, as a psychotherapist, to help my clients understand that what we are doing is not simply a conversation about issues of concern to them, but a delicate process of attending to habits and feelings at the very edge of consciousness (and beyond), and that even their simply leaving their phones on during the session (unless truly essential and agreed upon) can seriously impair the power and value of what we’re trying to do.

            What are the venues within which these conversations should take place?  The family, certainly, but that’s not enough.  Schools struggle to develop policies that protect the students, the staff, and the educational process, but often fight upstream against resentment of any infringement whatever on the total freedom of students and family to stay in touch with everybody at all times.  A few churches, here and there, sponsor conversations on the moral implications of ethics in the digital world.  And academic events such as the symposium sponsored by the Ethics Center on March 28^th offer a golden opportunity for scholarly consideration of the implications of the digital technologies on our life together. 

            But the law and social mores are always playing catch-up—we’re always behind.  New forms of theft, of manipulation, of victimization, always emerge faster than we can develop thoughtful responses to them.  If we are to be served by our tools and systems, rather than be victimized by them, we will need all the awareness and intelligent thought we can get to plan systems of visibility and accountability. 

            I wonder about our readership—what are the places where the abuse of digital technologies most concretely impact your lives?  And how do you think we should be thinking about those abuses and planning responses to them? 

Climbing the Tower of Babel

            Since the "Tower of Babel," humans have been fragmented into language groups, not only separated from one another, but often suspicious of or hostile to one another.  Privileged subgroups have often had the opportunity to bridge those gaps, though that’s been less true of general populations.  There have long been significant international contacts among groups of diplomats and business professionals; academics of various specialties; world travelers among the well-to-do; artists and musicians of various forms; and in the last century or so, radio amateurs, who spend time talking with one another all over the globe.  But the general population has not had the opportunity to develop much in the way of familiarity—let alone intimacy—with one another.

            No more.  Not only has international travel become more possible and more common, but the digital media flow around the world as easily as do radio and television broadcasts.  We have arrived at a crossroads where on the one hand international tensions are as dangerous as they’ve ever been, but on the other, opportunities for people-to-people understanding around the globe are also more accessible than ever before.  We have the opportunity to create unprecedented levels of familiarity with people who seem very different from us—if it matters to us.

            I want to argue that it is imperative for educators, journalists, peace advocates, and others to grasp the opportunities presented by the digital media to encourage growth in the direction of a genuine world awareness—not “one world,” because cultural and linguistic diversity will not melt away in the near future, but growing communities of people who understand that common interests in ecology, economics, military technology, etc., make it imperative that we get acquainted as well as possible across national borders.

            Mine is not an affluent family.  Yet all three of my children have spent time overseas.  My youngest spent a year in Shanghai, learning Mandarin.  I have a grandson who has spent significant time studying in Latin America—in Spanish.  I have two other grandchildren who have spent time in France, developing their French skills.  There is no longer anything unusual about those experiences.  But as we spend more time in cultures other than our own, I find myself wondering whether we feel the need to continue developing world awareness, or does it feel more natural just to subside back into the “normalcy” of our own setting, losing awareness just as we tend to lose fluency in languages which we rarely speak? 

            The first long-distance call I ever made required the assistance of half a dozen operators, connecting trunk lines to enable me to speak to someone less than 400 miles away.  Now I can pick up my phone, push a few buttons, and hear a friend in New Zealand answer the phone.  I enjoy that immensely—but those conversations don’t make me intimate with Kiwi culture (even though they can help).  What helps more is that one of the tabs on my browser is the front page of the Christchurch Press.

            We need more than ever to understand what feels urgent to the citizens of Nigeria, Australia, France, Brazil, etc.  We can’t learn all those cultures in depth.  But we can learn about a few more easily than ever before, if we are surrounded by people who expect us to follow the news of the world.  It makes a difference whether my friends think the latest gossip from Ballantyne, Gastonia, Atlanta or Hollywood is all I need to know about the world beyond my doorstep.

            How many Americans understand the difference between an Iranian and an Arab?  How many have a sense of the reality of life today in the cities of China?  How many understand what Qur’an really means to the Muslims of the Near East?  These and other issues are mentioned in our news media frequently, yet not many of us—yet—use the ubiquitous digital media to learn about the world beyond our borders.  We depend on professional journalists—who perform an incredibly important function, but their work product is not enough.

            Suppose twenty-five percent of Americans were to pick one other world country, and make it a source of frequent study?  Read their newspapers online, form digital friendships with interesting people in that country, become familiar with their history, politics, currency, geography, etc.  The result could be a dramatically enhanced American intimacy with the people of the rest of our planet.

            If we are to learn how to live in some sort of peace with the other peoples who share our planet, we must get to know them better.   The digital media offer us an unprecedented opportunity to do that, easily and steadily.  I wonder whether Americans will make use of those opportunities.  Your thoughts?

Ralph Milligan

Meeting new people

            I’m grateful for the posts here on issues surrounding privacy, what’s “real,” and the values involved in assessing these and other questions in digital space.  These are real and important issues, calling for answers which we're inventing now and will be for some time to come.

            But as a career psychotherapist, my primary concerns about the digital world surround human relationships—and the digital world obviously has huge implications in these areas too.  Early in my career, single and unattached clients often asked me, “Isn’t there something besides bars and churches?”  Now, undeniably, there is.   My topic for this post:  the advantages and dangers in meeting people in the cyberworld.  Two very different examples . . .

            --One of my clients told me about “falling in love” with a woman on the Internet, and agreeing to meet her in a nearby city at five p.m. on a Friday for a weekend of passion.  He told me later, “By seven p.m. I was praying for a good excuse for leaving.”  His experience was not unique.

            --Some years ago a divorced friend of mine told me that she was falling in love online with a guy who was a thousand miles away, of a different religion, and not yet divorced.  Neither had ever even been to the other’s state, and the ethnic differences were immense.  I did my best to caution her, knowing all the while that advice to a person who is “in love” is usually a waste of breath.  To my considerable surprise he moved to her state and courted her in a rather traditional fashion, and a year later they asked me to officiate at their wedding.  Their marriage isn’t perfect (as if there were such a thing!), but it’s far better than many.  I needed the corrective to remind me not to generalize about such events.

            There was a time when hearing that someone had met and married (or moved in with) someone they met online was shocking news.  Now it’s almost completely unremarkable—in part because, as we do with all new social inventions, we have developed methods of dealing with such connections that provide additional common sense and safety.  But this morning’s “Ask Amy” column makes clear that that task is by no means finished.

            Pertinent issues to consider:

            --Online connections can increase exponentially the number of potential partners we might meet and get to know—especially for people in small town or rural areas, and for busy people even in urban areas.  Even with the disadvantages of the lack of direct contact at the beginning, this has obviously enabled some marvelous connections that would otherwise never have happened—especially when (as cited above) we continue to develop new standard methods of increasing safety and appropriate methods of getting acquainted.  “We don’t really get to know them,” some complain.  How many marriages in my parents’ generation were between people who ruefully confessed later that they “really didn’t know each other”?  And that still doesn’t address the issue of the “matching services.”

            --Sociologists have long known that physical attractiveness can and do help to launch new relationships.  But people who are gifted in areas of kindness, intuitiveness, integrity, and other values—can often be people who are not stunning to look at . . . and therefore may be overlooked by those for whom they would be excellent partners. 

            I was “talking” to a very bright and interesting young man whom I met online one night, and after I identified myself he said, “If we had met on the street, you would have paid no attention to me.”  I asked why.  He said he had pink spiked hair.  And I realized that sadly enough, he was probably right.  Online relationships have enabled me to connect with a number of people whom I very much enjoy, but whom I would probably have never “met” had our first judgments been on the basis of physical appearance.  The “amputation” of physical appearance at the beginning can enable some marvelous connections to happen.

            --A cyber-connection need not be a substitute for meeting IRL.  I have met in person a number of people with whom I had first connected on the Web.  In every case we had corresponded for a significant length of time, and the person I met IRL was precisely the person I had met online—no surprises, just enhanced appreciation.  I have other cyberfriends whom I have not yet been able to meet IRL, but their friendship means a great deal to me.  I’ve thought of the ancient mechanism of “pen pals,” from half a century or more ago, where people formed valued connections with people far away, often in other countries or languages—except now it’s far more immediate and playful.  And cheaper!

            --Online relationships often provide a method of “normalizing” interests which might otherwise be considered “weird” or unacceptable.  If you’re a long-haul truck-driver who loves crocheting, a lawyer who loves racing dirt-bikes, or a homemaker who loves competitive boxing—you may not know many people in your area with whom you can really connect.  But online, you may be sure, there are many people to whom your varied interests make sense.  Is there a darker side to this?  To be sure—as is true of everything.  But it doesn’t need to be dark.  It can be wonderful.

            My point:  we need, and are developing, new forms of caution and new sets of manners for use in managing relationships with people we meet online.  But intimacy, mutual support, community, shared recreation—all of these human values and others may be served as much as diminished by online relationships.  It’s just that it’s very difficult to invent, develop, and refine appropriate methods of managing those relationships as fast as the online environment provides new forms of connection.  Defining “Facebook friend” is an unfinished task!

            Cyber-connections aren’t going away.  We need robust conversations about safe and rewarding ways of managing them.

            Tomorrow:  What does “intimacy” mean now?

Will Digital Technology Domiante Us?

            “We can affirm the unavoidable use of technical devices, and also deny them the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste to our nature” (Martin Heidegger Discourse on Thinking).  As increasing numbers of people join the digital age we appear, at least, to confirm the first part of Heidegger’s statement. Technical devices are now imbedded in daily life. Of course, to some extent, the use of technical devices defines what human means. However, now well advanced beyond simple tools such as clubs or eating utensils, digital technical devices infuse nearly every aspect of life. In twenty years I have gone from a bulky $3,500 desk-top computer, with 8 Meg of RAM and a 40 Meg hard drive, guaranteed to be all the memory I would every need, to an Android “smart-phone” in addition to a laptop, 8 GB I Touch, and desktop with considerably more RAM and hard drive space.

            Have I somehow become less human by being tied to so many devices with the capability of taking me out of my immediate environment? I would like to think the answer is no. But I have to admit the difficulty of being in the digital age lies in the second half of Heidegger’s counsel. Can we “deny them [technical devices] the right to dominate us, and so to warp, confuse, and lay waste to our nature?” Someone I know was so averse to voice mail that when his cell phone provider include voice mail as a standard feature, he dialed his cell phone 30 times and filled up the voice mail box with empty messages to prevent having to respond to voice mails. I called him recently and when he did not answer, the call went to his voice mail and I was prompted to leave a message. I no longer heard “I’m sorry [exactly how a computer generated voice can be sorry could be a future topic] the voice mail box is full. Good-bye.” Had technology somehow finally exerted its dominance and dictated a change in the person’s behavior? Or had some societal influence necessitated the change?

            Heidegger goes on to promote the need for meditative thinking, arguing that [humanity] is “in flight from thinking.” He contrasts the deep, reflective, meditative thinking with the calculative thinking that “races from one prospect to the next. Calculative thinking never stops, never collects itself.” The challenge for digital people, at least from what I perceive, is to refrain from the indiscriminate adoption of the latest innovation, or the newest invention marketed with the promise of a brighter future. The challenge is to resist the “flight from thinking” and ask ourselves reflective, penetrating questions which guard us from “wasting our nature.” Perhaps, if the digital age challenges us to reach back and re-discover meditative thinking, digital technology will strengthen our nature as we move forward.