The following is a brief excerpt from a talk by noted science fiction author Dr. David Brin.
[emphasis has been added to the original text]
(c) 1993 David Brin
...
ALL of the anecdotes I've just mentioned have one thing in common. They point out the critical interaction we face, between technology, accountability, and privacy. I expect few topics to create more ferment, during the coming decade. As Americans, we adore our privacy even more than freedom. Even more than we love our flashy techno-toys. So, when we are told (as we will be, quite soon) that "privacy laws" will protect us against nosy intrusion by our neighbors, by businesses and government, we'll vote for them, standing up and shouting "Aye!"
But nothing will protect or save privacy. It's over.
The anonymity of urban life was one of the attractions which brought millions to vast cities, escaping the village busybodies, back home. But that armor of seclusion amid multitudes is going to vanish in the near future, like the chimera it has always been, a passing illusion, a fluke in the history of human communal living. Soon, we are going to return to the way of life of our ancestors -- to the transparency of the village -- whether we like it or not.
Let me ask you something. How many of you in this room think that if we pass privacy laws it will actually prevent the rich and powerful from finding out anything they want to about you? What, no hands raised at all? I thought not.
Clearly, all "privacy laws" will accomplish is to provide common folk like you and me with a warm, fuzzy mirage of seclusion, while having the major effect of preventing you from finding out anything at all about the rich and the powerful.
What shall we do about those mosquito-sized spy drones I spoke of earlier? Banish them from Radio Shack? Restrict their use only to the police?
Right.
Or rather, over my dead body. If anyone is going to have the power to spy on me, I want them to know that I just might have a mosquito of my own -- watching them watch me!
That's how courtesy was enforced in the old village. People understood that it was in their own best interest to be polite. You quickly learned that the best defense against bad neighbors was to work at being a good neighbor yourself.
Soon, that fellow who laughed as he rudely cut you off on the freeway won't be able to hide behind a shield of anonymity anymore. The kid who swipes an apple from a shouting fruit vendor can expect to get a phone call on his wrist phone before he runs more than a block away. Would-be burglars will have to be awfully clever, when cheap video cameras in any home can be automatically linked to the police, in real time. And the inveterate flamer on a computer bulletin board will find his system plagued by "courtesy worms" -- a type of immunal response software -- sicced onto him by members of an offended Net community.
In the village, it wasn't fear of retribution that kept you from behaving rudely, callously toward your neighbors; it was the sure knowledge that someone would tell your mother, and bring shame to your family. Tomorrow, when any citizen has access to the universal database to come, our "village" will include millions, and nobody's mom will be more than a fax call away.
I reiterate; it's over. It was fun while it lasted, living on these city streets amid countless, numberless fellow beings, not knowing any of them at all. It was also lonely. Today, you read about old folks found dead in their apartments, months, even years after anyone had last seen them alive. That won't happen anymore when the village returns. Busybodies will gossip, but you'll be able to leave your doors unlocked. Everyone will know how much you paid for your nose job, and what videos you rent; but you and your kids will have friends in every part of the world, whom you met through shared interests on the Net. And when you travel, those friends will pick you up at the airport with wide open arms, even though you never laid eyes on them before in your life.
Perhaps, after all is said and done, most of us will even decide that it's better that way. Better to know our neighbors (in their multitudes) than to live a fiction, a lie, of splendid, lonely isolation.
As if we're going to have the slightest choice in the matter.
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In conclusion, I want to return for just a moment to the issue that may have struck the most nerves, when I raised it a little while ago. That is the issue of privacy, and my suggestion that the era of leading anonymous lives -- each of us dwelling almost alone amid the urban multitudes -- is about to end. Laws intended to seal off our private information from prying eyes will only guarantee that those prying eyes must be rich and powerful, in order to roam at will across our personal affairs. Those laws will also make certain you and I have no access at all to information about the rich and powerful, except what they choose to share.
We can have either freedom or privacy, I predict. Alas, not both. Given that dichotomy, if the alternative is to give up liberty, my own choice is clear. As long as the playing field is even, and everyone is subject to the same rules, perhaps privacy should be exposed as the myth that it has always been.