What, Me Worry? The Privacy Question
22 Jun 2012, 15:11 UTC
Why do Americans do so little to ensure the privacy of their communications? Is this a new kind of liberation? Or the symptom of a real psychic, as well as political, breakdown?
by Alva Noë
AFP/AFP/Getty Images Your life is in there, somewhere: Facebook's Amir Michael introduces a new, more efficient server design during a 2011 media event at the company's headquarters in Palo Alto, California.
Why do Americans do so little to ensure the privacy of their communications? Is this a new kind of liberation? Or the symptom of real psychic, as well as political, breakdown? When I was a kid, for a while we had a party-line telephone. A few different families shared the same line. We each had different rings. If you wanted to make a call and the phone was in use, you had to wait. Nothing stopped you from picking up the receiver and listening in on other calls. But why would you? We didn't know the other families on our phone line. If we had cared more about our privacy, my parents ...
