I don't want to take away from the importance of the comments below - but on their occasion, simply comment: in the fields of information and computer ethics (ICE), one of the most important theoretical approaches these days is authored by a chap at Oxford named Luciano Floridi. His information ontology is a radical re-visioning of traditional metaphysics and ontology, so as to make "information" the basic unit of reality. On this view, further, you _are_ your information (Floridi has recently denoted human beings as "inforgs" - (connected) informational organisms. On this view, privacy is very much a matter of a state of data. Generally, as computer ethicist James Moor famously (at least within ICE) noted, electronic means of communication, and most especially the internet, "grease" information, making it far easier to transmit, collect, redistribute, etc. Within this framework, privacy is a matter of "informational friction" - slowing down / stopping specific information from leaking beyond specified boundaries. I'm _not_ trying to suggest an either/or here between privacy as data and privacy as user experience - but rather to say that it would be really interesting to combine these two views ... so many projects, so little time... Thanks, everyone, for your comments on this thread - invaluable! - c.
danah has articulated something enormously important:
"Privacy is an experience that people have, not a state of data."
This has strong implications for the ways we design technologies for privacy. If privacy is a user experience issue, then the process for design should be organized accordingly and cannot be accomplished without the involvement of actual participants in the community who will use that technology. If privacy is a data issue, then a completely different set of heuristics apply.
thank you, danah!
Andrea
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Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies <http://www.drury.edu/gp21> Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Information Ethics Fellow, 2006-07, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, UW-Milwaukee Co-chair, CATaC conferences <www.catacconference.org> Vice-President, Association of Internet Researchers <www.aoir.org> Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes <http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php> Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23