bynamite

In April 1966, Time Magazine published the most controversial magazine cover of all time.  This was back when magazines really mattered, they were our national interpreters of news and culture.  As the most popular news weekly in America, Time mattered most of all.  The cover story asked, “Is God Dead?“

The question had already been asked and answered for thousands of years.  But Time’s report came in the middle of America’s cultural revolution, when many social norms were being revisited and overthrown.  The new theologians claimed, “ours is the first attempt in recorded history to build a culture upon the premise that God is dead.”

Four months later, the controversy rose to another level on John Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.”  Lennon later explained that he meant that the Beatles had more influence on young people than religion.  He was certainly right in the one measure that matters most to media observers:  the Beatles sold more music than anybody.

Is privacy like God? Not in the sense of blasphemous comparison, but in the similarly unending debate, which seems to be reaching a crescendo during today’s Internet revolution.  It has become fashionable to proclaim that “privacy is dead.”  Apparently, Facebook’s CEO doesn’t believe in privacy.  Maybe Facebook is actually quite similar to the Beatles, in terms of holding a pivotal place in a cultural revolution to new social norms.

But before we go too far with this comparison, let’s look at what the answer Time’s question turned out to be.  Decades after the countercultural peak, God is as alive as he ever was – which is only to say that there are believers and nonbelievers, and declarations by either side don’t end the argument.  Even death doesn’t end the argument, as Nietzsche, Lennon, or the guy who wrote the Time story would agree, if they were alive to do so.

Facebook’s 400 million users is pretty impressive, but the Bible has that beat by a few billion.  Lennon’s statement may have heralded the cultural primacy of popular music, but it didn’t come close to marking the death of God.  All the “smart money” in Hollywood can think that God is dead, but it didn’t stop Mel Gibson from making $300 million on his belief otherwise. Similarly, I think the phrase “privacy is dead” simply declares the ascendancy of a certain kind of media, and it doesn’t mean that the old desires and expectations will ever die.

Yet another tech observer claims that “no one cares about privacy anymore.” Personally, I think privacy is a lie – a giant red herring to distract people from the real issues.  But these strident declarations that “no one cares” are self-evidently untrue.  Just think about it:  the fact that the article is written at all means that people care.  You don’t see declarations that “no one cares about podiatry” – because foot medicine really is a topic that interests very few people.

Let’s examine the author’s “proof” that no one cares about privacy -

Successful social networks like Facebook show that people are willing to exchange privacy for free services. This is wrong for two reasons:

First, people are willing to exchange money for services, it happens literally all the time, and obviously it doesn’t mean that no one cares about money.  In fact, people care about money precisely because it can be exchanged for valuable goods.

Second, none of the services in question are explicit about the privacy proposition.  You don’t see anyone saying, “Hey, we’ll give you this great free service, and you give us your personal information, which we’ll sell and use anywhere we want, potentially causing you embarrassment and harm.”  Instead, they say, “Hey, we’ll give you this great free service (and don’t worry, your information is safe with us).”  The fact that people are willing to believe that second statement doesn’t show that people don’t care about privacy, it shows that people are easily fooled.

Less privacy leads to a more virtuous society. This is an attempt to provide a reason that no one should care about privacy; it’s not in any way support that no one does care.  Once again, the statement itself disproves the author’s point:  you wouldn’t need to give reasons to give something up if no one cared about that thing. And more importantly, less freedom would lead to a more virtuous society (in at least some people’s minds), but that obviously doesn’t mean that we should give up freedom for virtue.

The younger generation doesn’t care about privacy, so you shouldn’t either. Oh man, where should I start with this?  The younger generation doesn’t care about a lot of things when they’re young.  And they change their minds about a lot of things as they get older.  And whether or not they ever change their minds, the older generation doesn’t choose what to care about based on what the younger generation thinks (other than oldsters who are desperately trying to cling to youth by emulating the young).

And finally, the younger generation has different notions of privacy, which they care an awful lot about.  Sure they’ll post a drunken party picture for “the world” to see.  But did they want their mom to see it?  Ask any teen if they want privacy from their parents; you’ll find out that teens care deeply about privacy.  That desire for privacy is as strong as any you’ll see, and it doesn’t go away – it evolves from a concern about parents into a concern about employers, colleagues, the government, the spouses and children.

Look, it’s stupid to argue about whether people care about privacy (I’m including myself in that stupidity), and not just because the existence of the argument itself proves that people care, and not just because privacy is a lie anyway.  Why argue when you can look at actual scientific research rather than bald assertions?