Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: today we're gonna devote some time to a question we'll
Speaker 1: see from a listener by the name of Oscar. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't see his last name for privacy reasons, which
Speaker 1: which is interesting because this whole podcast is going to
Speaker 1: be about the idea of privacy. What is it? Does
Speaker 1: it exist? Is it an illusion? Is it dead? Uh?
Speaker 1: You know all the various Do we care too much
Speaker 1: about privacy? Yeah? Yeah, Um And yet Oscar, a longtime listener,
Speaker 1: brought this up, and he sent us a really very
Speaker 1: thought provoking long email about this. So we won't read
Speaker 1: the entire email, but just to kind of get this
Speaker 1: conversation kick started. Um and for a context, we'll just
Speaker 1: read a little bit. Um. His email says, I just
Speaker 1: listened to the Eat Popcorn podcast and I was glad
Speaker 1: of how it moved from the subliminal messaging to the
Speaker 1: private see issue. Um. In the podcast, July expresses concern
Speaker 1: of how she feels that she is giving away too
Speaker 1: much of her personal information to vendors and in general,
Speaker 1: to the world out there. That makes me ask, why
Speaker 1: are people so paranoid about sharing information? I understand that
Speaker 1: in the past, the security and responsibility of your information
Speaker 1: lied with the individuals. If I moved across the scene
Speaker 1: upon arrival said my name was John Doe, they would
Speaker 1: have no choice, no other choice than to believe that
Speaker 1: I was John Doe and start gathering information from there.
Speaker 1: But and this is a big butt, I mean font
Speaker 1: size one plus, we are living in this so called
Speaker 1: era of information. Information is not only power, it is
Speaker 1: becoming part of the basic structure of our civilization. I'll
Speaker 1: admit that as a civilization we are still learning how
Speaker 1: to deal with it, how to process it, how to
Speaker 1: use this new power we just got. But that is
Speaker 1: the whole point. We need to admit to the fact
Speaker 1: that we need training in the upgrade, if you will.
Speaker 1: I love the point about crossing an ocean and changing
Speaker 1: your name, because I that's one thing that instantly comes
Speaker 1: to mind with all these more or we're we're you know,
Speaker 1: logged into these different accounts, and we have all these
Speaker 1: you know, we have identification numbers, and the government knows
Speaker 1: where we are and the state government knows where we
Speaker 1: are that you can't just you know, do pull a
Speaker 1: Don Draper and just back up somewhere else and to
Speaker 1: clear yourself a new person, which is which is an
Speaker 1: attractive idea. Everybody loves the idea of being able to
Speaker 1: start over, to be able, the idea of just getting
Speaker 1: in your vehicle and like just driving and just wherever
Speaker 1: it takes you, you're gonna wind up. Well, think about
Speaker 1: our ancestors to um many of nsistors here in the
Speaker 1: United States have that experience. I mean, I can I
Speaker 1: can tell you two different relatives that change their name
Speaker 1: upon arrival to the United States, um, you know, for
Speaker 1: political um reasons, so on and so forth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we don't have that. I guess you could
Speaker 1: call it a lecture, even though that this were pretty
Speaker 1: hard times and people are escaping very um horrible circumstances
Speaker 1: in order to to attain a new identity. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I mean we're we're broadcasting from Georgia, where you know,
Speaker 1: all the really you know, hardcore Georgians you know, descended
Speaker 1: from people who came over in the sex criminal boats.
Speaker 1: So and I know we have Australian listeners out there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's like I imagine it's the same
Speaker 1: thing there. There's there's this sense of going to a
Speaker 1: new any kind of frontier colony environment. You know, people
Speaker 1: went there and they might have had kind of a
Speaker 1: crappy past, but they were able to start over and
Speaker 1: then if they screwed up again, they just needed to
Speaker 1: move further out into the wilds. And uh and just
Speaker 1: as many start doovers as you need till you get
Speaker 1: it right right, they didn't have all this looming information
Speaker 1: out there, but what they just eight or what they
Speaker 1: just spent money on or uh, yeah, they're they're criminal
Speaker 1: records essentially. Um. So it made me, I think, it's
Speaker 1: just a very intriguing question. Made me think, is it
Speaker 1: really just an illusion, this privacy? Um? And is it
Speaker 1: a is it some sort of remnant of our past,
Speaker 1: particularly Americans, this idea of rugged individualism that just doesn't
Speaker 1: exist anymore. Because it's worth noting that the word privacy
Speaker 1: is uh. Some linguists consider it untranslatable into various tongues. Um.
Speaker 1: Many languages lack a specific word for it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and you end up with complex descriptions like I believe
Speaker 1: in Russian Uh. It ends up meaning something about like
Speaker 1: basically solitude. Um. And the the original our word, our
Speaker 1: English word privacy comes from the Latin privatus. Does that
Speaker 1: sound right? That sounds good? Separated from means, separated from
Speaker 1: the rest, deprived of something um and uh and often
Speaker 1: ends up having a legal or governmental use right. And
Speaker 1: and when we live in communities, we always know that
Speaker 1: there's some sort of trade off for living in a
Speaker 1: community and being supported in a community, right, Like you're
Speaker 1: not just no, no man is an island unto himself,
Speaker 1: and if he is, he might be the UNI bomber,
Speaker 1: right well, yeah, and it it goes in, it spills
Speaker 1: over into the whole issue of like libel suits and slander.
Speaker 1: You know, who can be slandered, who can be liabel?
Speaker 1: Like different different laws, different rules apply. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're a private citizen or if you're a public servant,
Speaker 1: or if you're a you know, I you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a top tier celebrity. So um, it varies greatly depending
Speaker 1: on who you are and how how out there you
Speaker 1: are in the world. Yeah, and I wanted to read
Speaker 1: just a little bit more to um concerning this illusion
Speaker 1: of privacy. He talks about a worldwide civilization when the
Speaker 1: borders are gone, which I think is very interesting, right,
Speaker 1: because so much of our lives are being played out online.
Speaker 1: So more on that. On another email, he says, but uh,
Speaker 1: in your everyday life, you're the car you drive, the
Speaker 1: gadgets you use, the clothes you wear, the way that
Speaker 1: you dress your kids, what you do for a living,
Speaker 1: even the way that you walk, the way you comb
Speaker 1: your hair. They all give away the story of who
Speaker 1: you are. But that's fine. It is the way that
Speaker 1: information is supposed to be free. Information is valuable, but
Speaker 1: it's not a physical thing. It baffles me why people
Speaker 1: want to treat it as if it was building vaults
Speaker 1: for it, restricting access to it, when the fact is
Speaker 1: that the more information those, the easier it is to
Speaker 1: keep it safe. Well, one could make that argument, yeah, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: and he does. He goes onto the argument and talk
Speaker 1: talking about the sort of transparency in society. I mean
Speaker 1: even surveillance, right, um, cameras that if if we know
Speaker 1: that we're being taped, if we know we're being looked at,
Speaker 1: that we're not necessarily going to do things, um, outside
Speaker 1: of the law. So again, interesting interesting fodder here because
Speaker 1: I understand what he's saying. There's so much of ourselves
Speaker 1: that we're already revealing. Um. And yet and yet it
Speaker 1: feels like for me personally that if it's being used
Speaker 1: for consumption purposes, for for businesses, that it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like uh maybe part of the bargain that that I
Speaker 1: was hoping for. I can't help but think of like
Speaker 1: old you know, the old Biblical and uh, you know
Speaker 1: accounts of say like Adam and Eve where it's like
Speaker 1: they live in this perfect society when they're naked, and
Speaker 1: then when you introduce uh, you know, sin and all,
Speaker 1: they suddenly they have to cover up, they have to
Speaker 1: use leaves, they have to It's like the birth of
Speaker 1: privacy and uh. And so there's this I can definitely
Speaker 1: understand the idea of you know, if there are no
Speaker 1: you know, if everybody's naked in you know, an informational sense,
Speaker 1: then there wouldn't be any issues, you know, because what
Speaker 1: are you gonna what are you gonna hide? Right? How
Speaker 1: are someone going to use it against you? You know,
Speaker 1: you can't be blackmailed, right. That's the like any movie
Speaker 1: about blackmail, it's like that's always seems to be one
Speaker 1: of the options on the table. It's like, well, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna come clean about this political scandal before someone
Speaker 1: can blackmail me or you know, and it robs the
Speaker 1: blackmailer of their power. Well and even wiki leaks right right, um,
Speaker 1: which has its been pretty illuminating information. Um. And and
Speaker 1: so many people would argue with that this is necessary, right.
Speaker 1: A lot of people do make that argument. Yeah, um
Speaker 1: so and I just to to bring up the naked
Speaker 1: analogy too. I was sort of thinking myself, well, why
Speaker 1: do I have a problem with with privacy or what
Speaker 1: I perceive of is the lack of privacy right in
Speaker 1: our technological days. Um, because I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: have to have a I'll lead a pretty mundane life.
Speaker 1: But I think it's still that's exactly what a person
Speaker 1: with a dark history would say on a podcast. Sure
Speaker 1: they would, Yeah, I'm just talking about my name is
Speaker 1: Julie Douglas, okay, um. But you know, it is that
Speaker 1: idea again and and and so for me, it's this
Speaker 1: question of is it just like this antiquated American idea
Speaker 1: of individualism that you know that is melting away. As
Speaker 1: Oscar talks about civilization, a worldwide one where the borders
Speaker 1: are gone, right, well, I mean then there there are
Speaker 1: also plenty of issues like like like how far do
Speaker 1: you take privacy? It's like, uh, you know, there's that
Speaker 1: old adage, which is thankfully disappearing in the United States,
Speaker 1: But the whole, the whole thing of like, well, what
Speaker 1: a person does in the privacy their their own bedroom
Speaker 1: is their business, and generally that brings with it the
Speaker 1: assumption that that that whatever is going on doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be known, and that if it were known there
Speaker 1: might be uh some sort of repercussions for it, you know. So, um,
Speaker 1: I guess like the mystery has gone. Yeah. But but
Speaker 1: it's also it's like the idea that privacy like Oscar's
Speaker 1: argument that the more the less privacy there is and
Speaker 1: the more the information is free flowing, the safer we are.
Speaker 1: But clearly history and even in modern times, there are
Speaker 1: plenty of situations where privacy saves human lives and makes
Speaker 1: human lives safe in uh, in societies or under governments
Speaker 1: that are less tolerant or it is completely intolerant of
Speaker 1: different ways of life, different political ideologies. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes necessary for us to hide from one another
Speaker 1: because sometimes the eyes that are looking you know, are
Speaker 1: are powered by nefarious brains. Okay, So that is I
Speaker 1: think a really interesting point and a good way to
Speaker 1: talk about the Patriot Act. Right. We sort of debated
Speaker 1: about whether or not we talk about it at the
Speaker 1: end of the today, this is a really good example
Speaker 1: of of why privacy matters. Um, and just for everybody. UM,
Speaker 1: just a little reminder about the Patriot Act that you know,
Speaker 1: after none eleven, it brought sweeping changes to the way
Speaker 1: the government accesses and utilizes information about private citizens. Um.
Speaker 1: It's been criticized as undermining civil liberties, particularly parts of
Speaker 1: the counter surveillance law. Right. How easy it is to
Speaker 1: get wire taps in this sort of thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know you don't have to get a quarter
Speaker 1: or um. FBI can also search telephone, email and financial
Speaker 1: records without a court order. Um. And the problem here
Speaker 1: is that it can those that that sort of wide
Speaker 1: latitude can be used outside of the context in which
Speaker 1: it was originally meant for. Right. I mean it supposed
Speaker 1: to be to go after terrorists, but um, and then
Speaker 1: you know you do have FBI saying up until two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, no, it's never been abused Okay, So
Speaker 1: now you have other reports that have surfaced, um from
Speaker 1: this is from first Amint Mint Center dot org, New
Speaker 1: York Times, and Business Week. They all reported on this
Speaker 1: that it's that actually the Patriot Act has been used
Speaker 1: outside of its original context to remove homeless people from
Speaker 1: trained stations, to pursue drug rings, and to collect financial
Speaker 1: data on random visitors to Las Vegas. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: is random there. Um, so you know already and you know, um,
Speaker 1: have a human mind works and historically how we have
Speaker 1: behaved and when you have that sort of what I
Speaker 1: think in this case is is an unbalanced here right
Speaker 1: of power, but it can be used very readily against people.
Speaker 1: And as you say, if you know, thankfully we live
Speaker 1: in the United States, and at least we we think
Speaker 1: that we live in a society in which our privacy
Speaker 1: and our individual rights are respected. But you know, still
Speaker 1: there's gray area there, and certainly there are other countries
Speaker 1: in which people are not treated as fairly right. And
Speaker 1: you know, like the period of McCarthyism wasn't that long
Speaker 1: ago when digging around to find the evidence of communism
Speaker 1: and people's past and people becoming blacklisted, Yeah, and um,
Speaker 1: and at risk of sounding like you know, some sort
Speaker 1: of a radical. It's it's any time a government is
Speaker 1: given power, any time people hand over power to a government. Uh,
Speaker 1: generally it's a little naive to expect the government and
Speaker 1: to hand that power back over when they're done with
Speaker 1: one particular gold or another, especially if that goal is
Speaker 1: something say like defeating terrorism or you know, or or
Speaker 1: winning the war on drugs or something that is it's
Speaker 1: largely unattainable anyway. Yeah, and so you know, you got
Speaker 1: that's the things that we need to consider when looking
Speaker 1: at privacy. UM. And I do like Oscar's idea that
Speaker 1: it's it's beneficial, you know that there's we are going
Speaker 1: to obey the better angels of our nature and use
Speaker 1: it the right ways. Um. I do think there's that possibility.
Speaker 1: But we have already seen as a as I talked about,
Speaker 1: that it's been used outside of its contact at least
Speaker 1: the Patriot Act has. And uh, we will never know
Speaker 1: the far ranging effects of the Patriot Act until much later.
Speaker 1: A lot of that is because even the reports have
Speaker 1: been filed, much of it has been redacted, so you
Speaker 1: can if you're if you go to look at that report,
Speaker 1: you might be able to see that the subject was
Speaker 1: a female or a male, but pretty much everything else
Speaker 1: is going to be blacked out. So it's hard to
Speaker 1: say when you have a government that's not being fully
Speaker 1: transparent itself. And of course they will say, you know,
Speaker 1: we need to do that for security reasons, and you
Speaker 1: know there's an angle there that that is relevant. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think what is interesting to me about the
Speaker 1: Patriot Act and uh, where we as a society sort
Speaker 1: of came into our technological Uh I don't know, what
Speaker 1: would you say, like our maturity maybe. Um, these things
Speaker 1: seem to have dovetailed at the same time. Right, So
Speaker 1: after None eleven, Uh, you have the Patriot Act, and
Speaker 1: you also have people using the Internet and unprecedented numbers
Speaker 1: and sharing information, our personal lives flowing onto it. Um.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I remember when I first got on
Speaker 1: my Space. Um, you young listeners may not remember my Space,
Speaker 1: but but it existed and I think still does. If
Speaker 1: you're a band or something, you can still visit it. Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: but but I remember it felt like this frontier where
Speaker 1: it was like it was just a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: young people who wanted to hang out or date each other,
Speaker 1: you know, So you didn't really think about, well, you know,
Speaker 1: who all this information you're putting out there, and and
Speaker 1: then uh, and then later you realize, wow, that was
Speaker 1: really stupid of me, you know, like the like the
Speaker 1: we we we just talked in another podcast, The Cyber
Speaker 1: Immortality about how we're different people. The person I was
Speaker 1: a year ago as and who I am now. The
Speaker 1: person a year from now isn't who I am now.
Speaker 1: Certainly you're my Space person isn't definitely not the same
Speaker 1: person or now. Yeah, and so it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: like the MySpace you from ten years ago wasn't concerned
Speaker 1: with how about getting a job somewhere necessarily or or
Speaker 1: you know, or or or what his or her you know,
Speaker 1: political opinions or social opinions at the time, we're compared
Speaker 1: to what they might be at, you know, a decade later.
Speaker 1: So um so so so it's interesting to see how
Speaker 1: that's changed. Like I feel like a lot of us
Speaker 1: are like that, where the Internet, what the Internet is,
Speaker 1: has has changed in that time, and then who we
Speaker 1: are has has changed. But to a certain extent, a
Speaker 1: lot of the data we put out there, they say,
Speaker 1: it's like putting information in the in on the Internet
Speaker 1: is like putting p in a swimming pool. There's no
Speaker 1: not really a good way to get it out again.
Speaker 1: You can delete anything. This presensation is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Intel sponsors of tomorrow. Well, and what I was
Speaker 1: thinking too, is because of the Patriot devetailing with our
Speaker 1: increased involvement with the Internet, is is it on a
Speaker 1: subconscious level? Of course, we don't have any scientific data
Speaker 1: to back this up, but so this is just a question.
Speaker 1: But is it on some levels? Was that sort of
Speaker 1: when we lost our privacy virginity? You know, like we
Speaker 1: had a lot of us were very fearful at the time,
Speaker 1: and um, certainly we know that the government was able
Speaker 1: to pass the Act because of that. Um there was
Speaker 1: a juggernaut of emotion. Yeah, following not eleven um and so,
Speaker 1: and we all know that we act irrationally, and when
Speaker 1: we're controlled by fear of our brain makes different decisions.
Speaker 1: So once we sort of handed over the reins that way,
Speaker 1: at least symbolically, if not everybody was affected by the
Speaker 1: Patriot Act, did we then sort of say okay, and
Speaker 1: then we're on this thing called the Internet and we're
Speaker 1: exchanging all of this information and it's really neat, you know.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's okay for me because I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm getting something in return. I'm getting this instant gratification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's so it's like the you know, the
Speaker 1: the revelation that, oh, the government's off in my business.
Speaker 1: You know, you get used to that idea and then uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes along the phone companies like, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to know where you are at all times,
Speaker 1: and You're like, all right, I mean the phone's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I can play a scrapple on it and and used
Speaker 1: the map system to figure out where I am in Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if we would have made it
Speaker 1: to the live recording. You. No, we wouldn't have made
Speaker 1: it to the coffee shop and back had it not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we literally took out your iPhone and we're following the
Speaker 1: dot as we were. Yeah, so maybe I you know,
Speaker 1: I take that as the comforting bribe, but I'm giving
Speaker 1: up something in the process. Well it's interesting to you
Speaker 1: that that you're talking about the iPhone because there, um
Speaker 1: there's a German Green Party politician his name is mult
Speaker 1: Disputes and he went to court to find out what
Speaker 1: his cell phone company, Deutsche Telecom, knew about his comings
Speaker 1: and goings, because he was just sort of interested about
Speaker 1: what sort of information they were amassing. He found out
Speaker 1: that in a six month period from August thirty one,
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine to February eight, two thousand and ten,
Speaker 1: Deutsch Telecom had recorded and saved his longitude and latitude
Speaker 1: coordinates more than thirty five thousand times UM. It traced
Speaker 1: him from a train on the way to turn Langan
Speaker 1: at the start of the day and then through the
Speaker 1: following night when he was back home in Berlin. So
Speaker 1: oftentimes this will happen. They'll they'll take the coordinates just
Speaker 1: because they're the signal is sort of being rebooted. But
Speaker 1: when they looked at this case that that wasn't it.
Speaker 1: It was just randomly sort of tracking his coordinates um,
Speaker 1: which begs the question, what do they want with all
Speaker 1: that data? You know? What was Obviously they can say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he went here and there, and we can give
Speaker 1: this to marketing firms and better pinpoint his interests and
Speaker 1: translates to bigger dollars. That's a possibility, but it's it's
Speaker 1: still sort of interesting how and all the legalis that
Speaker 1: we sign off on with our contracts for cell phones
Speaker 1: or even you know, for downloading application. There there's um
Speaker 1: what we're sort of giving away that right to our
Speaker 1: privacy when it comes to that, Yeah, that giant wall
Speaker 1: of text that comes with any uh system contract or
Speaker 1: device contracting. I mean who reads that? I think I
Speaker 1: heard one, like one NPR story about a guy who
Speaker 1: read or maybe as a woman who read the contract.
Speaker 1: But it's because if for a living they write those contracts,
Speaker 1: but the normal people actually you know, leaf through. Does
Speaker 1: it seems like you reach a fatigue point about one paragraph? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's the whole point of legal ease,
Speaker 1: I think, right, is to to fatigue you to the
Speaker 1: point you're like, oh fine, I'll just just sign off
Speaker 1: by paragraph six. It's talking about like the river of
Speaker 1: the soul and and uh and bounding the spirit to
Speaker 1: opjects and things like that, right yeah, And you're like,
Speaker 1: I kept rivers so I just want this application. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I mean it comes down to that sort of idea
Speaker 1: of who does own our identity? Then? Um, and particularly
Speaker 1: is we begin to store more and more data about
Speaker 1: ourselves cloud computing and otherwise, Uh, you know, how is
Speaker 1: that going to be played out in twenty years or
Speaker 1: you know, we forever going to be tethered to a
Speaker 1: company that owns our online uh projection of ourselves? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I mean typically these companies have to sort of
Speaker 1: play pr our niceties when when talking about this about
Speaker 1: who owns the information or they kind of skirt around
Speaker 1: the issue. But in the end, like take something like Flicker.
Speaker 1: You know, you put a lot of your life onto
Speaker 1: a Flicker account. Uh. I mean to the point where
Speaker 1: like if you if you own a Flicker account and
Speaker 1: you were to die, like the Flicker account would kind
Speaker 1: of be an online um memorial too, you know only
Speaker 1: need you might want that to live on, or you
Speaker 1: might want that to live on for someone that you
Speaker 1: you knew, and uh you know who owns that? Who
Speaker 1: owns your your profile with all your your your thoughts
Speaker 1: or bails and correspondences. And if you are deceased, do
Speaker 1: you uh any longer have rights to those photos? Can
Speaker 1: they be used by someone else? Yeah? Yeah, Um, so
Speaker 1: sort of brings up some good questions about that. I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit too about when you're
Speaker 1: talking about my space and and you know who who
Speaker 1: you were then, who you are now, and these different
Speaker 1: iterations of yourself that exist. Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicts
Speaker 1: that every young person one day will be entitled automatically
Speaker 1: to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in
Speaker 1: order to disown youthful hijiink stored on their friends and
Speaker 1: social media sites. Uh so here you go. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this idea that you know, companies might sprout up to
Speaker 1: actually whitewash your identity is very possible. It has been
Speaker 1: talked about in the industry. Yeah, it's kind of kind
Speaker 1: of like this idea that just like, all right, the
Speaker 1: thirty year old me needs to get this new job.
Speaker 1: I need to hire somebody to kill the twenty year
Speaker 1: old me. We're still out there on the Internet looking
Speaker 1: like a total goof is well, and think about the
Speaker 1: fifteen year old today. Think about the sort of information
Speaker 1: the fifteen year old has, and assume that the fifteen
Speaker 1: year old is very open with with whatever information going
Speaker 1: to share, because that's the thing for a lot of us,
Speaker 1: Like you said, I was talking about when suddenly the
Speaker 1: internet was here and like for a for a for
Speaker 1: a large number obviously, when we remember that time. We
Speaker 1: didn't grow up with the Internet. It just came into
Speaker 1: our lives like this mysterious piper with a bunch of
Speaker 1: rats following him, you know. And uh and we followed him,
Speaker 1: uh and uh and it's been a weird experience ever since.
Speaker 1: But other people have have been born and grown up
Speaker 1: um in the Piper's under the Piper's spell. So so
Speaker 1: they have a totally different idea of what privacy is
Speaker 1: and what it should be. Yeah, and and that makes
Speaker 1: me think about Sherry Turkle, who has written a lot
Speaker 1: about technology and our relationship to it. And she makes
Speaker 1: that point. She says, just because we grew up in
Speaker 1: the Internet does not mean that it is growing up,
Speaker 1: does not mean that it it is fully formed now. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's still the wild West in many ways, in
Speaker 1: terms of legalities, uh and in even sort of the
Speaker 1: way that we interacted psychologically. But again, this fifteen year old,
Speaker 1: I mean five years from now, what might we know
Speaker 1: about her? You know? I mean think about all the
Speaker 1: different ways that we can collect data on or we
Speaker 1: google Earth, we can see where she lives. Um, we
Speaker 1: know her Facebook status, UM, Twitter, four Square, her blog, missives,
Speaker 1: we have access to her thoughts you know, possibly uh,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe what she just purchased and where her
Speaker 1: coordinates her I Q her sa T scores her grades
Speaker 1: for does she have a criminal record? I don't know
Speaker 1: her medical record? Which X man she would be according to?
Speaker 1: Right right right? And think about that. I mean that
Speaker 1: is this a lot of layer of detail? Um? And
Speaker 1: you know, would what kind of control would she have
Speaker 1: in five years over that or in like, you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years from now she's running for public office and
Speaker 1: someone's like she was on Team Edward back in the
Speaker 1: Twilight Days. Do you want to vote for somebody who's
Speaker 1: on Team Edward? Right? I know, because that is how
Speaker 1: fickle us human beings are, right, we might look at
Speaker 1: that and go, oh god, no, totally not Team Edward. Um.
Speaker 1: So that kind of makes me think about the future
Speaker 1: of data mining, especially for for younger generations who have
Speaker 1: been accused of over sharing. Um. And again to go
Speaker 1: back to Google CEO Eric Schmidt Um. This is from
Speaker 1: an article Google and the Search for the Future from
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal. He says, I actually think most
Speaker 1: people don't want Google to answer their questions. He elaborates,
Speaker 1: they want Google to tell them what they should be
Speaker 1: doing next, And then he gives a scenario. Let's say
Speaker 1: you're walking down the street walking here we are because
Speaker 1: of the info Google has collected about you, we know
Speaker 1: roughly who you are, roughly what you care about, who
Speaker 1: your friends are. Google also knows, too, within a foot
Speaker 1: where you are. And uh. Mr Schmidt then leaves it
Speaker 1: to a listener to imagine the possibilities. If you need
Speaker 1: milk and there's a place nearby to get milk, Google
Speaker 1: will will remind you to get milk. Google knows you
Speaker 1: need milk before you know that you need milk from
Speaker 1: your list right. Um, it will tell you a store
Speaker 1: ahead has a collection of horse racing posters that you like. Uh,
Speaker 1: that the nineteenth century murder that you've been reading about
Speaker 1: took place on the next block. So uh, are these
Speaker 1: the things that really come up for you? Like? No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know you have Jack the Ripper fascinations. No,
Speaker 1: this is just in Mr Schmidt's this this scenario, I
Speaker 1: thought it was from the article. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't have any more spacing poster fetish Um. But
Speaker 1: Mr Schmidt says that a generation of powerful handheld devices
Speaker 1: is just around the corner that can fulfill this need,
Speaker 1: and they can be adept at surprising you with information
Speaker 1: that you didn't even know that you wanted. So this
Speaker 1: is the point where maybe you cease to actually think
Speaker 1: about things and are told or suggested about what to do.
Speaker 1: So Google comes in. Basically they say, not only was
Speaker 1: free will an illusion before, we're gonna go ahead and
Speaker 1: completely dispel it and uh and just take over all
Speaker 1: your decision making free will and privacy our illusion. Sorry
Speaker 1: about that, but hey, here's you need some bread, so
Speaker 1: you might as well pick that up with your milk. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it does. It's we still can't answer the
Speaker 1: question is is it a fair trade off what we're
Speaker 1: doing right now, the information that we're sharing. Um, but
Speaker 1: it does make me wonder if we're sort of opening
Speaker 1: our digital veins a bit too much and letting an
Speaker 1: information flow. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see how privacy
Speaker 1: evolved of their changes, uh in the years ahead. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe it reaches the point where we just we had
Speaker 1: we end up having to have a different view of it.
Speaker 1: From a very early age, you know, where your mom
Speaker 1: takes you aside and says, all right, this is the
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you blog about or whatever it is
Speaker 1: by that point and this is the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that is that is completely private. Maybe that becomes this
Speaker 1: just more of an emphasis on the separation. I don't know,
Speaker 1: And I mean we've already absorbed much of this mindset anyway, right,
Speaker 1: so it maybe it's not too big of a deal. Um.
Speaker 1: Maybe we aren't necessarily eroding our civil liberties or our privacy. Um.
Speaker 1: But again, I think the Oscar brings up a really
Speaker 1: good point about that, and especially the point about how
Speaker 1: since we're in the middle of this, we we actually
Speaker 1: need to look at it um and know that it's
Speaker 1: not actually fully formed and think about it. So thank you, Oscar. Yeah. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: I have us an email from another couple of individuals
Speaker 1: whose last names will be with health for privacy reasons.
Speaker 1: First we have one from Mark Anthony and Mark Anthony.
Speaker 1: How is it y'all? Uh? They wrote it wrote out
Speaker 1: y'all alright, like the podcast lots of food for thought.
Speaker 1: Just like to comment on your podcast about audio hallucinations.
Speaker 1: I used to live in Alaska after my parents dragged
Speaker 1: me up there as a child. I would chop wood
Speaker 1: and watch the Aurora borealis in the extremely long winters
Speaker 1: and that super quiet environment. Laying back in the snow,
Speaker 1: I would I would hear music often as I gazed
Speaker 1: up at the sky. I've heard that this is a
Speaker 1: common occurrence among people who have seen the Aurora. Can
Speaker 1: you set some light on this or did I just
Speaker 1: have a bad case of cabin fever? Oh? The music
Speaker 1: was always some symphonic classical stuff, which I enjoy. But
Speaker 1: I listened to metal uh at the time, a lot
Speaker 1: of thrash strange, So that's interesting. Well, I kind of wondered, too,
Speaker 1: is that during a period of twenty four hour daylight
Speaker 1: in Alaska? Because everything I ever learned about Alaska is
Speaker 1: from al Pacino in the movie in which he went
Speaker 1: nuts or someone went nuts? Because there is that? What
Speaker 1: it is I saw me it's a remake of of
Speaker 1: a European film, which is, in my opinion, are superior.
Speaker 1: The original starts stolen scarce guard and has a lot
Speaker 1: more shades of gray in terms of the characters. Don't
Speaker 1: even get me started on the fem Nikita and then
Speaker 1: the astradization of that and in the American version. But yes,
Speaker 1: so I don't know that that's the question I have.
Speaker 1: You know, what were the what were the other circumstances
Speaker 1: surrounding that, But I do think it's very interesting. But well,
Speaker 1: I have seen the Aurora bore alice, if I remember.
Speaker 1: I'm told I've seen the Aurora boor alice as the
Speaker 1: thing because I was a child in Newfoundland and uh
Speaker 1: and I think it was when my mom was in
Speaker 1: the hospital to give birth to my youngest sibling. Um,
Speaker 1: some friends of theirs like took us out and supposedly
Speaker 1: show the siger roar about bore alice. But the only
Speaker 1: thing I remember is reading a dinosaur booklet in which
Speaker 1: one dinosaur like is this rated? Another one? So that
Speaker 1: is that sounds like you probably as a small child.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I totally missed out on this, or totally
Speaker 1: it didn't make an impression on me, which you were
Speaker 1: like dinosaurs evisceration high pretty lights you pale in comparison. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe a listener will out there will will share
Speaker 1: their similar experiences or or just you know, get a
Speaker 1: straight on the whole Aurora borealis and use it thing. Um.
Speaker 1: I have another one here from j J j J says, Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm listening to the Does Your Dog Love You? Podcast?
Speaker 1: I was wondering why it is that we like to
Speaker 1: watch dogs and other animals play so much. For that matter,
Speaker 1: why do human beings will love to have fun or
Speaker 1: other animals? I see my dog playing all the time,
Speaker 1: and she never seems happier. She even seems to be
Speaker 1: using some type of imagination while doing it. Where does
Speaker 1: fun come from? From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, fund should
Speaker 1: serve some kind of function to pass on one's genes.
Speaker 1: In that sense, it's hard to imagine fun being beneficial
Speaker 1: for us because I don't see where it accomplishes this.
Speaker 1: What do you think? Maybe this would be a good podcast?
Speaker 1: Keep up the great work. Pretty cool. Yeah, well that's
Speaker 1: some interesting food for thought. We may have to explore
Speaker 1: that later. I know that. You know, as we discussed
Speaker 1: in that particular podcast, Um, it's fun to watch our
Speaker 1: dogs play because we have that connection with them, and
Speaker 1: it actually releases um oxytocin in the brain's right and
Speaker 1: so we get this feel good mother infant uh drug
Speaker 1: coursing through our brain when we're interacting with this dog
Speaker 1: that we find adorable because it kind of sort of
Speaker 1: looks like an infant. Well, also, I was thinking too
Speaker 1: about little kids and when they play and they have
Speaker 1: you know, fun I guess and air quotes. But um,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people have said that that's
Speaker 1: the way that they're working out their own creativity and
Speaker 1: also working out there's their social roles. So we have
Speaker 1: that whole podcast on creativity. Yeah. I just think about
Speaker 1: that too. So it's it's maybe another way to come
Speaker 1: at problems, we know through play. Yeah, well, it intantly
Speaker 1: comes to mind little boys playing um you know, sword
Speaker 1: fights and whatever on the playground. They're they're kind of
Speaker 1: learning to fight in the same way that a kitten
Speaker 1: wrestles with things, because it's kind of learning to kill
Speaker 1: small animals. Yeah. Yeah, I actually remember getting that. I
Speaker 1: mean my brother and I were no, no, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: no play play fight. It's like an episode of Dexter childhood.
Speaker 1: Um well cool, cool, that's that's some some awesome food
Speaker 1: for out there. And if you haven't listened to that
Speaker 1: episode and or a dog owner to check it out
Speaker 1: and give us your feedback. And if you have some
Speaker 1: feedback on this particular episode, um, and and and and
Speaker 1: oh by the way, if you happen to be um
Speaker 1: Georgian or Australian I don't mean any offense about the
Speaker 1: whole sex criminal boat thing, but yeah, no, he's a
Speaker 1: segment with the way back, way way back, and we
Speaker 1: all have a touch of that note. I'll like debtors,
Speaker 1: colonies and so on and sap. But yeah, if you
Speaker 1: have any any cool feedback on the whole privacy thing,
Speaker 1: let us know. I'd love to I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: even just some amusing anecdotes about how your previous online
Speaker 1: self has interfered or in some way affected your current
Speaker 1: online self. Um. You can find us on Twitter and
Speaker 1: Facebook is blow the Mind, and you can also drop
Speaker 1: us a note at blew the Mind, at how stuff
Speaker 1: worst dot com and more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in
Speaker 1: the upper right corner of our homepage. The how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today on
Speaker 1: iTunes