The other day, I couldn’t remember the web address for the home page of a graduate course I am currently taking on electronic communities and writing. Rather than look it up, I decided to take the easy way out—I did a Google search. I typed in the instructor’s name and the course abbreviation, then hit enter. What popped up was slightly unnerving. Much to my surprise, what appeared beneath the address for my course’s home page was a link to my own Blog. Apparently, because I had referenced my instructor’s name in a previous posting, my Google search had turned up more than my instructor; it had turned up me.
Why I found this so unsettling may have something to do with my reserved upbringing. In our Irish family, things are not bared for all the world to see. As the saying goes, we don’t “air our dirty linen.” Though a legitimate reference to my instructor (I had made reference to an article he had written) is certainly not dirty linen, the ease in which something I had thought was between a select small group of classmates could become known to millions left me feeling vulnerable.
I am not alone in my insecurity. In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Siva Vaidhyanathan comments that even young people who have no qualms about posting pictures of their latest exploits on social networking sites are concerned about who gets to decide what information is shared. “When we complain about infringements of privacy,” notes Vaidhyanathan, “What we really demand is some measure of control over our reputation in the world. Who should have the power to collect, cross-reference, publicize, or share information about us, regardless of what that information might be?”
The lack of control over what kinds of information about ourselves are made available to others has serious repercussions for us as individuals and as a society. Last year, I was sickened to watch what happened to a family friend whose private mistake became a public scandal on the televison show American Idol. Notes Vaidhyanathan, “As long as we are held highly accountable for youthful indiscretions that are easily Googled by potential employers or U.S. customs agents, we limit social, intellectual, and actual mobility. And we deny everyone second chances.”
What is worse than the kind of reputation trashing my friends endured, however, is what Vaidhyanathan refers to as the Nonopticon. The Nonopticon is the “state of being watched without knowing it, or at least the extent of it.” It describes the current environment in which we are tracked, watched, and profiled through what we buy at the grocery store, order on-line, or peruse on the Web. Notes Vaidhyanathan, “for the sake of a decent society, we must expose, understand, and confront the Nonopticon.”
Thanks for the nice words!
Siva