Tech-Social Notes:
Our Power and Freedom on the Web
Requires Vigilance, Too
Robb Murray
This year I went to the
1 To help you anticipate the cruise,
the organizers put those interested into a Yahoo Group. Everybody could
e-mail everybody else, starting a couple of weeks in advance, and could even
chat live via microphone.
2 A lot of the participants e-mailed their pictures around to
the group and posting them onto Yahoo in advance of the trip.
3 Part of the group got to
4 Some of those arriving early also wanted good
5 A number of people brought along digital cameras and, after
the trip, loaded their snapshots onto a web
site.
6 The tourist agency organizing the cruise wanted you to sign
up for extra events so there was a web site plugging a catamaran ride to a
secluded beach (“unlimited rum drinks”) and a special singles afternoon in
All this gave you some feeling that you
were actually participating in the cruise long before departure, and that you
could also do so long after it was over. It made for expanded group
bonding possibilities and even people who weren't plugged into computing wanted
to see the web picture albums after the trip.
Regarding some of our cyber-connecting,
however, I did have some misgivings. Because all of the digital
communication was happening by means of data files, all potentially permanent,
the grand interchange also had shadows of privacy and security risks.
The wrong digital camera, for example,
could produce an embarrassing picture or two on the public web site.
Online chats, not known for their well-thought-out characteristics, are easy to
"select all" and "copy to clipboard," and can be archived and
e-mailed to others in a flash. Less experienced users, intending to reply
privately to someone who had written a Yahoo post, could find their personal
mail distributed to the whole group.
For the women in particular who were
e-mailing their pictures to everyone, it would hardly be faulted that many
seemed justly proud of their attractiveness. However,
There is an illusion of intimacy about
computer communications, partly because they are generally initiated by
individuals, often in private, even cozy, circumstances in which one's guard
may be down (such as late at night, just before bed).
The cyberpunks liked to say, “Information
wants to be free.” Personal information, however, is not always the best
to share in a digital way. Computer files intended to be
limited-audience or ephemeral may be discarded by most of us. But a
"private" file can get ponged around to
huge numbers of others, or stored on a CD-ROM forever. And
given to whomever. For whatever purpose
(including harassment, hostile lawsuits, and blackmail.
If you have ever sent a posting to a
USENET bulletin board, key your name into Google, then click the Groups
tab. Bring back any memories? Even old versions of your web site
may be archived in the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org) without your permission or
awareness.
I don't like people to
get too paranoid about our cyber world. But it deserves saying that
nowadays malevolent motives have particularly powerful tools because of
supercomputers, massive databases of personal information, and a social and
legal climate that always lags behind the danger curve and that reacts
sluggishly to protect or defend.
Let a thousand cyber-friendships bloom
and, yet, let cyber-abuse and social predation find us forearmed and far from
vulnerability.