The management of one’s public/private personae in relation to its privacy implications

In today's world it seems a fruitless cogitation to create a stark contrast between our public persona and our private persona in relation to its privacy implications. If surveillance is an issue to any member of a community, online or otherwise, one can simply choose to avoid it (or at least try to, as I will discuss later in this post). Undoubtedly, certain surveillance features  are unavoidable. Increasingly, firms are collecting information from clientele and using it for means other than its original intended use. The fact remains, however, that we enter into online communities, and in some cases real, physical communities, at our own prerogative.

As I touched on in my previous blog post, whether or not we change ourselves for these online environments, we can never be completely different than our true selves when delving into them. I brought up the prospect of using a spectrum to determine how much one chooses to divulge (and how much of that information is true) about them self in an online community. This spectrum is even more imperative when discussing these matters in relation to a society of constant surveillance. As David Lyon suggests, the gathering and processing of personal data is vital to contemporary living; unavoidable. If increased social surveillance is undesirable to certain members of society, they will have to choose to avoid the communities.

As the convergence into a more technologically ubiquitous society continues, choices about avoiding communities become more difficult. Innate to the human psyche is the unyielding desire to belong to such communities. As one's friends and family converge into an increasing number of both online and physical communities, issues about constant surveillance often disappear. Sherry Turkle writes and speaks candidly about the contemporary problem surrounding an endemic disassociation from society. The concept of being "alone together" reinforces innate desires within us for mere connection, sacrificing conversation in the process. If surveillance was truly a concern to a large proportion of the population, such flight from conversation would not exist.

Perhaps the emergence of a surveillance society seems unimportant to today's youth because they simply know no different. The issue seems to be with volunteering our personal information in the midst of such a surveillance society. Anders Albrechtslund propositions that volunteering information, whether surveilled or not, can create a sense of empowerment in an individual. Such a suggestion purports either indifference or ignorance in the face of surveillance. Lyon put forth the idea that the Orwellian thought of actuarial principles taking over from ethical principles is becoming increasingly evident in modern society. However, Albrechtslund believes that despite the routine, systematic and purposeful surveillance of society, surveillance can be subjectivity building and even playful in practice. A growing indifference to surveillance among those who participate in communities leads me to believe that both are correct: amidst an increase in contemporary surveillance, most people either don't care about volunteering their information or just don't realize what they are doing (the valorization of surveillance is another issue analyzed well by N.S. Cohen here).

A wonderful example of why withholding information from certain public avenues might be beneficial to those of us involved in such online communities is put forth my a classmate of mine in this blog post. As university students the prospect of our extra-curricular activities (a necessary euphemism indeed) being made public is a choice that sometimes is even taken out of our control. With friends, families, and coworkers all involved in online communities certain things we do, whether or not we are directly involved as well, will inevitably be made public, and in turn surveilled for purposes we do not desire.

Ultimately, the tenets of democratic, capitalist society are deeply ingrained in the theory of freedom; thus, we have the choice of how much of our information we are willing to disclose in online communities which we have limited control over. However, it is becoming an increased portion of reality that in the midst of such a surveillance society the management of our personae can be taken out of our own hands. Adapt or die, I guess.