Internet in all candour - Future Internet Week Countdown (II)

Is internet a threat to our privacy?

Last week I sent an e-mail to all my LinkedIn-contacts to alert them to some recent changes in my career. To my shock, I received an error message from the e-mail address of someone who had died recently. Apparently, his LinkedIn-profile is still alive. Perhaps no one succeeded in deleting his profile so far.

It seems it is very difficult to remove content from internet once it has been published. Privacy is no doubt one of the biggest challenges in the future of internet.

A fishbowl society

In his recent book ‘The New Normal’, Belgian IT-visionary Peter Hinssen says the notion of privacy is being replaced by the notion of transparency in our digital society.

We are evolving towards a ‘fishbowl society, marked by total transparency’.

Just look at what everyone is publishing on Facebook. Teenagers see no problem whatsoever in publishing pictures of their drinking bouts or other adventures on their Facebook account. Recently, one of my Facebook-friends offered a daily detailed account of how her relationship had gone sour. I admit it was fascinating reading, but I could not help feeling like a peeping Tom.

Generation Gap

Members of the so-called Generation Y tend to be very open on internet, just as open as they are in conversations with their friends. This clashes with the more reserved manner of their parents or previous generations. Youngsters think openness and transparency are inevitable, so it’s no use trying to hide anything. You might as well put everything on internet right away. My oldest son thinks it’s a pity there is no generation gap. We like the same music so there’s not a lot to disagree on. But perhaps this transparency on internet is something we can argue over…

Yet there are signs that young consumer has second thoughts on the way some organizations are abusing his openness. Research in the US claims that young people disapprove of social networks that commercially exploit or resell their information.

Facebook got some negative publicity lately and this may cause youngsters to behave more cautiously on the information highway. Especially now they notice their parents are also going online and follow them on internet. Privacy may lead to yet another generation gap: when we were young, our parents had no way of knowing what we were up to.

Young people may be open to their peers, but not to their parents.

Internet reflects real world

Our privacy is under pressure. Companies like Google, Facebook or Netlog try to get the most out of the information of their users and are constantly testing the boundaries of what they can do. Google is not squeamish about this.

“If you don’t do anything wrong, you don’t have to worry about your privacy” Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed last year.

Another Google employee stated internet merely reflects the physical world: in the real world, nothing goes unnoticed either, thanks to all the security cameras that keep an eye on us.

Our privacy is under pressure. But I don’t think we just have to accept that fact.

(José Delameilleure)

From December 13th to 17th, the Future Internet Conference Week takes place in Ghent. Have a glimpse of the future of internet.