Want to know something about someone? Just Google their name and their history is at your fingertips. Online databases and social networking allow you to learn their political and religious affiliations, the private events of their lives, their financial status, their comings and goings- their good behavior and their bad.
“The Web Means the End of Forgetting,” the cover story of the New York Times Magazine‘s July 25 issue by Jeffrey Rosen should be required reading for anyone documenting their personal minutiae on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. Read More
We Know Too Much About Each Other
Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal bemoans the state of our private affairs and how rapidly we are losing a notion of privacy in our culture. Notions such as seclusion, freedom from interference or intrusion, privacy, discretion and concealment no longer carry the weight or meaning we once thought they did.
The Eyes Have It is Noonan’s take on the post-privacy era and what it means to us as Americans. How do we define the American spirit when there is no place to hide?
Technology is wondrous but Noonan reminds us how it restrains, constricts and diminishes freedom.