Why are people so willing to give away their
personal information to complete strangers?
It's
because humans want to share information. And in
fact, they share information a lot more freely
than other "things" such as goods and services.
Which
of these are you most likely to provide without
thinking much about it?
• To
give a stranger directions to the bus stop
(information). • To
take a stranger to the bus stop (service). • To
give a stranger bus fare (goods).
If
you're like most people, you'll freely give
directions, but you'll resist giving away your
money.
And that's how civil human
society works, we share, and we especially share
information, because it costs us little and it
helps society function to more efficiently.
This
idea was expressed by
Clay Shirky
at Austin's South by Southwest (SXSW) in 2010.
Shirky has given multiple TED Talks and is widely
respected for his thoughts on technology's effects
on society. If you're interested in the subject of
privacy, you should really watch Shirky's 2008 Web
2.0 Expo NY presentation: It's Not Information
Overload. It's Filter Failure.
During
the presentation, Shirky makes the following
observation: privacy is a way of managing
information flow. According to Shirky, the big
question we're facing about privacy revolves
around the fact that we aren't moving from one
engineered system to another with different
characteristics… but that we're moving from
an evolved system to an engineered system.
"Managing
our privacy" isn't a natural act.
What
maintained our privacy in the past was that it was
generally inconvenient to spy on people. Platforms
such as Facebook present a new and unique problem
and new solutions (filters) are needed, rather
than to retool old existing filters.