Google Privacy?

This blog post will be devoted to discussing the idea of privacy in "the age of Google" First, before going into detail about anything, I feel that I should define the term "privacy". According to Wikipedia, privacy is "the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively". The article that I feel addresses this theme the best is the cloud computing article. Within this article, Carr specifically addresses the safety of general information online and he makes two good points. The first point is that if we want privacy we wouldn't put all of our personal information online. This is a good point, as many of us put all of our information on Facebook and just believe that it will be magically guarded from people whose mission is to do harm. As the interview mentions, we want better results and we know that by putting our information online, we will get it. The second point is that

Privacy has always been an issue throughout history. With every new medium comes new issues in privacy. A good example of one of the first mediums that privacy could be violated with would be the book. Many people keep diaries and would those diaries be read by the wrong people, the information could be used in a malicious way. The same could be for television and audio. Using audio, people were able to record sound clips and in many cases, this sound clips, if listened to by the wrong people could violate privacy. I remember one particular instance in which one of my fellow students in the seventh grade brought an audio recorder to class and recorded the lecture. During the lecture, however, my teacher yelled at a student and when he found out that he was being recorded he absolutely flipped and started ranting about his privacy. The same thing can happen with recorded video. Videos can have sensitive information on them and in the wrong hands, a person's privacy can be violated. I guess that what I'm trying to get at is that with every medium there has been the issue of privacy. The only difference is that now, it is easier to access than in the past. There is no longer any need for the physical book, audio recording, or video anymore. Almost every aspect of a person's life is laid out online for everyone to see.

As far as theories go, there really isn't a theory that describes this theme perfectly. However, I do believe that the theory of Social Space by Meyrowitz can apply in a particular context. This theory argues that the medium determines how people react in certain social situations. In the case of privacy, I can argue that the medium determines how people react as well. When there were less advanced mediums, the physical place often had an effect on how people reacted to the distribution of their sensitive information. The example of that could be the one of my teacher flipping out. His privacy was being violated right before his eyes and he was able to react to it. However, in this "age of google", it is harder and harder to detect when our privacy is being violated. Because of the elimination of physical privacy barriers, in this age, it is especially important that we safeguard our information.