RickInOz

It didn’t seem that long ago that people valued their independence and anonymity. Perhaps the British understated culture had something to do with it, or maybe it was just people liked the concept of being able to go to the shops on a Sunday morning in slobby clothing without having to worry about pictures of them appearing in the following day’s newspaper.

The change began insidiously with the cult of celebrity worship. No longer was it enough to simply admire (or despise as the case may be) sportsplayers, filmstars or politicians. Instead people started becoming obsessed with every minutiae and nuance of their lives. The media simply satisfied the demand and so an era of paparazzi and Hello! was spawned. It was this same culture that was responsible for the death of Princess Diana, but unfortunately no lessons were learnt.

Instead people became seduced by the concept of celebrity and explored ways to have their “fifteen minutes of fame”. Again the media were happy to oblige and invented shows like Survivor and Wife Swap. A plethora of similar programs followed exploiting the fallacy that any brain-dead, talentless bozo could become an overnight sensation. That acts like HearSay sunk into oblivion within months of being headline news doesn’t seem to deter the masses willing to prostitute their dignity for a sniff of “fame”.

However not even this managed to satisfy the lust for celebrity status as there are people too ugly to appear on Big Brother and too talentless even for bottom-of-the-barrel shows like Pop Idol. Fortunately the internet stepped into the breach and provided a forum accessible to all. All you needed was a webcam and to ignore that nagging sense of shame.

I know sites like Facebook and MySpace serve a purpose for people who lack the technical skills to administer webspace and want to “network”. However I still think there is something intrinsically wrong with publicising your personal details online. True, many of these social networking offer the ability to restrict access to data, but most people don’t seem to bother based on the amount of information they shouldn’t yet do share. No wonder identity theft is the latest interest of organised crime gangs.

The worst still came when I discovered Twitter today. It seems this site encourages users to post information about every little aspect of the day and all of their movements (including the bathroom variety ones).  So in one fell swoop, Twitter took all of the fun out of stalking. Where is the fun in freezing your bits off in the bushes outside someone’s house when you can follow their lives far more intimately online? And with their consent to boot.

Now before anyone tries to throw me off this soapbox by pointing out the hypocrisy of writing this sort of post on a blog, there are a few important differences. Firstly I never post any personally identifiable information. For example you will not find my postal address, phone numbers or email addresses anywhere on this site, let alone any more private information. Secondly the detail on here tends to be retrospective and deliberately vague. Lastly this site is an independent venture and not referenced or housed by an umbrella organisation.

To get back to the point, it does seem that we have lost perspective on the importance of privacy. It used to be that people aspired to be athletes, astronauts or  artists. With the dilution of “celebrity”, it now seems we would rather become Jade Goody. In fact it may be this desire to be in the spotlight that has helped us overlook the growing presence of the other Big Brother. We are monitored and observed on a daily basis with ever increasing scrutiny. First it was the proliferation of CCTV networks, ostensibly for crime prevention, but now our financial “trail” is dissected and analysed, again supposedly to improve marketing. The last straw came with the proposal to put satellite tracking in cars. I can understand the need to track high-risk target vehicles, but surely the government don’t need to know that I’m going to the gym.

Naturally these intrusions are being introduced in a stealth fashion to slip under the radar of conciousness. This in combination with the growing acceptance of ubiquitous openness and publicity means we are slowly yet willingly ceding one of the most valuable aspects of democracy – the right to go to the shops on Sunday in slobby clothing without anyone caring.