Firstly, “privacy is the ability of an individual or group to keep their lives and personal affairs out of public view, or to control the flow of information about themselves” (“Privacy”, 2007). Personally, I feel that the people with the least amount of privacy are the celebrities. And this is of course caused by reporters whose job is to invade their privacy.
Secondly, “surveillance is the monitoring of behavior” (“Surveillance”, 2007). The most common used equipment for monitoring behavior is the closed-circuit television (CCTV). It is found in high security places and even in neighborhoods nowadays.
Lastly, “sousveillance is the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity (i.e. personal experience capture)” (“Sousveillance”, 2007).
Being a blogger, I post my life stories online for academic purpose and for my friends and the public to know more about me. My friend once told me it is alright to blog personal things and reveal everything about myself because the general public do not know who I exactly am thus I have no reason to be embarrass as I would not even meet them. However, I do refrain from revealing too much as I believe there must be a minimum level of privacy that I should have. Hence there are certain personal things which I do not blog about but write it down in my personal diary. This is the ONE way I negotiate my privacy in the blogosphere. This is because I know that it is difficult and impossible to control others to not read things that I do not want them to and I cannot blame people for reading my blog as I am the one who post it up.
As said, “In the age of the Internet, we are experiencing ‘omnipticon’ in which the many are watching the many, even though no one knows precisely who is watching or being watched at any given time” (“The Naked Crowd”, 2004). Though the Internet allows anonymity, privacy is still at risk. This is because, “in a world where status is constantly shifting, we feel increasing pressure to expose details of our personal lives to strangers in order to win their trust. We are increasingly forced to interact with strangers whom we will never meet face-to-face” (“The Naked Crowd”, 2004). Privacy is important to everyone. It makes me feel safer and gives me a sense of individuality. For others, they may refuse to expose themselves due to the fact that “revealing one or two personal details to strangers is inevitably a trivializing experience that leads us to be judged out of context” (“The Naked Crowd”, 2004).
I am sure nobody likes their privacy to be invaded, be it in the online communities or real world. Hence, we must be able to protect ourselves and determine which information to be revealed. If we were to reveal everything to others, we will just be a transparent being. To that extent, when people have discovered everything about us, they may think that we are boring instead of praising us for being so honest.
References:
Rosen, J. (2004). The Naked Crowd. Retrieved March 9, 2007, from http://www.spiked-online.com/Printable/0000000CA5FF.htm
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, 9 March). Privacy. Retrieved 10 March, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, 7 February). Sousveillance. Retrieved 10 March, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
Wikipedia: The free encyclopedia. (2007, 9 March). Surveillance. Retrieved 10 March, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
1 comment:
Mr Kevin, I did my bonus mission blog post too. I tried posting a comment in com125wordpress.com but I did not see the comment appearing even after sending 3 times. So I would like to inform you here instead. Regarding the visiting a friend's blog to add a comment(peer-review) for bonus mission, I will add later when more people have submitted their entries. I will add a comment again when I have done it. Thank you.
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