SXSW Interactive Panel Preview: Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?
Saturday, March 14
Austin Convention Center (500 E Cesar Chavez Street)
10 - 11 am
[info]
Those are the issues that will be explored at the South by Southwest Interactive panel discussion: "Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?" One of the panelists, Siva Vaidhyanathan, who earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees from the University of Texas, answered a few questions via email in advance of Saturday's session. (Disclosure: Siva and I worked together at The Daily Texan back in the mid-1980s.)
Joining Vaidhyanathan on the panel are:
- danah boyd: Currently a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, boyd's dissertation on U.S. teenagers' use of Facebook and MySpace is the best look at how young people use social networking sites.
- Judith Donath: The director of the Sociable Media research group at the MIT Media Lab and a Faculty Fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center.
- Alice Marwick: A PhD Candidate in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University.
Vaidhyanathan cited two mistakes we make when considering privacy concerns:
"First, we assume the desire and practice of publicity constitutes the pure opposite of privacy. Just because I share a hundred personal facts on my blog or Facebook profile, that does not mean there are not some things I would never share widely. There is no zero-sum between privacy and publicity.
"The second error we make is assuming there is some 'generational' shift in attitudes toward privacy that somehow absolves us of responsibility. Bluntly, there is no such thing as a generation. As John Lennon said, 'Everybody has something to hide except for me and my monkey.'"
Vaidhyanathan, currently an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, has written books on copyright issues and is currently working on a book called The Googlization of Everything, looking at how the web giant is disrupting culture, commerce and community. He reserved specific criticism of Google, but did advise that we should question "our increasing dependence on Google and the terms of the data-service exchange that is at the heart of our relationship with the company."
As for the other company dominating the web and pop culture today, Facebook, Vaidhyanathan didn't hold back.
"Facebook disrespects and underestimates its users," he said. "It always has. It probably always will. We are just cattle to Facebook. We are shallow profiles. That's why the company seems so dumb when it keeps blundering by changing policies, interfaces, and terms. I don't have great hope for the future of that poorly run company. The more it spends, the more money it loses, the more mercenary it will be. And the worse it will treat its millions of users. It has so many users and so few advertisers that Facebook knows it can treat users like we are abusable and disposable."
