Privacy is one of the aspects of our life that is and has been strongly affected by technology and as such is discussed frequently and with passion. Privacy is probably one of the most politicised issues on the Internet and a topic of many holy wars. In an interesting sign of zeitgeist, privacy with its 108 million results wins over traditional holy war adversaries such as linux and windows or emacs and vi.

During the last year or two the privacy-related discussions have become more frequent and were reaching mainstream more often so I decide it is the right time to read something substantial on the topic. A link to an interview with somebody called David Brin as well as positive publicity he received in the blogging world lead me directly to The Transparent Society.

David Brin maps origins and the current state of what is called privacy and asks what will happen to it with the arrival of ubiquitous, low-cost computing, cheap identification and off-the shelf surveillance technology. Will privacy come to its end? Are the changes for the worse? Will they mean the end of freedom?  These are questions that the book looks upon.

So what effects technology such as recent camera-enabled mobile phones will have on privacy? Brin's answer is that it will probably change, which in the end may not prove be the worst thing that could happen to us.

What about the 1984, Big Brother and civil liberties then? Privacy is indeed related to freedom, but Brin argues it is a "highly desireable product of liberty" rather than its condition and as such there are more important things necessary to maintain liberty. What he does see as more important is accountability, especially accountability of those who hold power.

Brin is unconventional in that he argues both against strong privacy advocates that touts anonymity as the next best thing that can happen mankind as well as government trying to seize more power through the means of surveillance. Both parties are trying to do the same, he says, reducing the flow of information. The only difference is that they approach it from different directions.

He thinks that the strong privacy advocates' stance is not going to fly, because it goes directly against the market and human nature. He predicts that availability of cheap off-the shelf surveillance-enabling technology will change the equation drastically. In this respect, it is interesting to observe this coming true 4 years after the publication of the book with the camera-enabled mobile phones. Important thing is that the technical change only plays to natural human tendency to collect and share information. He argues that these forces are unstoppable and thus reshaping of our understanding of privacy is not a matter of mere possibility but rather of a timeframe. He concludes that rather than chasing the ghost of privacy and trying to stop the flow of information, we should rather focus making sure information flows evenly in all directions. I see some strong ties with to blogs and blogging here.

By its own own admission, the book is short on solutions, stressing that there is not a single answer to all the questions and that the eventual outcome will have to be negotiated on the basis of individual cases.

Overall, I rank the Transparent Society among the top 3 technology books I read last year. I found it informative, insightful and fascinating.

3:49:44 PM