Information Promiscuity

Or, The Internet Changes Everything

This has been bugging me for a while, now. Years, actually. For some reason, I have a hard time putting it into words, though. So expect this post to be a little disjointed and incoherent. I hope to return to this idea repeatedly, and refine it over time. So consider this a kind of rough draft or first pass. I'll tune it up in future iterations.

Doctor Strangelove looks creepy. So does the Internet.

Privacy in the information age
This is a frequent topic of discussion on Slashdot. The general consensus of that community is that regardless of how the Internet makes it ever easier to share information, and regardless of how steady advances in computing technology make it easier to mine raw data for useful information, people are fundamentally entitled to absolute privacy. Any use of information technology--especially by the government or corporations--to learn things about people (even non-identifying things) is absolutely unacceptable.

I disagree.

The Internet changes everything
I don't really know how to say it better than this. Information is proliferating faster and faster all the time. Information that was previously hard to get and hard to analyze is now trivially easy to get, and trivially easy to exploit.

I think that earlier notions of privacy, based on the idea that even if you did let something slip, it wouldn't go very far, are completely obsolete. I think that the present generations of people, who were raised in the pre-information paradigm, are woefully inequipped to comprehend and adapt to the profound changes the Internet has wrought.

I think that their children, themselves raised by parents who don't understand this brave new world, are themselves little better off. It's not like their parents can teach them stable strategies for surviving in the information age: Their parents don't know any such strategies. Worse than that, their parents don't even realize that there's a new paradigm that requires new strategies.

I'm not just talking about Internet filtering software, or auditing a child's cell phone logs. There's a whole different mindset, a whole different philosophy, that must be worked out. And I think we're still several generations away from that.

The Neo-Luddites
One thing that frustrates me about the Slashdot community is that for all their enthusiasm for "information technology", its members seem totally unwilling to consider the long-term implications of these technological advances. No thought is given to the possibility that profound social changes are not only necessary, but inevitable. The focus of the community seems to be on how each individual can personally profit from an increasing level of information availability, without ever having to give up any control over their own information.

Even in situatiosn where the information is already out of their control, they object to any attempt by anybody else to mine that information and use it in ways they don't approve of. And yet, at the same time, they insist that it is their fundamental right to exploit other people's information however they see fit. Piracy for me, but not for thee, seems to be their motto.

I think of this mentality--that I should be free to exploit information technology however I like, but governments and corporations must continue to languish in the informational dark ages--as a kind of "neo-luddism": Civilization as a whole must not be changed by new information technology, and must not adapt to it. Even though the notion of privacy and information control as understood by previous generations is obsolete, society should still be bound by its outdated rules.

Cyberwarfare
The fact is, our civilization is increasingly a networked civilization. More and more of our infrastructure is part of an increasingly important, increasingly accessible information network. As this network grows in importance, it will grow in importance as a battlefield. This idea calls for careful consideration and thorough development.

Information Promiscuity
The thing that bugs me the most about all of this is the mismatch between our outdated notions of privacy and information security, and our eagerness to exploit more and more the growing information technology available to us. There seems to be a growing trend to "overshare" ourselves via social networking tools like MySpace and Facebook. We can't help networking our power grid management system, even though we can't effectively secure such networks against intrusion and exploitation. We get so excited about how new technology makes it easier for us to use information that we totally ignore how new technology makes it easier for others to use information against us.

In conclusion--for now
All of this bugs me. A lot. I wish people gave the implications of the information age more thought. I like my privacy. I get a little creeped out every time I see my picture at the top of this blog.

One reason I like the Ghost in the Shell stories so much is because information promiscuity and information security are a constant backdrop and a frequent theme. Masamune Shirow is one of the few people I can go to for the kind of thoughtful, far-reaching discussion of the implications of the information age.

One more thing
Did I mention I just created my own Facebook page?