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SXSW: Panel: Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?
Panel: Is Privacy Dead or Just Very Confused?
Date and time: Saturday, March 14, 2009 at 10 a.m.
Panelists: Danah Boyd, researcher at Microsoft Research; Judith Donath, MIT Media Laboratory; Siva Vaidhyanathan, Assoc. Prof. at University of Virginia; Alice Marwick, PhD Candidate at New York University
The gist: More than ever before, the concept of privacy is open to interpretation as people share more of their lives online. Debates included what should and shouldn’t be expected to remain private, what material is reasonable for governments and marketers to aggregate and dispense about us and how to understand the consequences beforehand of making too many aspects of our lives available for public consumption.
There was also plenty of talk about context, social currency and zero-sum transactions that, frankly, seemed a little heady for 10 a.m. the day after the start of one of this city’s drunkest weeks of the year. Really SXSW, this seemed like the best scheduling option? And no one thought to dispense coffee and aspirin at the door?
Quotes:“In the seventies there was a very public moment where people stood up and demanded protection of their privacy from the state, and that resulted in things like a much better credit rating system and better protections. It’s no coincidence that this was right after Watergate. Since then we’ve kind of taken that privacy for granted and now the entire interface has changed.” Siva Vaidhyanathan
Takeaways: Privacy means different things in just about any situation depending on age, authority involved and a host of other factors. To a teenager their home isn’t necessarily a private place (because they lack authority) while to their parents the home is the most private place they can imagine.
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