Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Other people's privacy

A timely privacy reality check; read the full post 

Privacy is not only essential to life and liberty; it's essential to the pursuit of happiness, in the broadest and deepest sense of that phrase. It's essential, as Schneier implies, to the development of individuality, of unique personality. We human beings are not just social creatures; we're also private creatures. What we don't share is as important as what we do share. The way that we choose to define the boundary between our public self and our private self will vary greatly from person to person, which is exactly why it's so important to be ever vigilant in defending everyone's ability and power to set that boundary as he or she sees fit. Today, online services and databases play increasingly important roles in our public and our private lives - and in the way we choose to distinguish between them. Many of those services and databases are under corporate control, operated for profit by companies like Google and Facebook. If those companies can't be trusted to respect and defend the privacy rights of their users, they should be spurned.

Privacy is the skin of the self. Strip it away, and in no time desiccation sets in.

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Other people's privacy