My entire feeling about privacy is that, while surveillance economy tends to amplify the worst parts, ultimately, Richard Thieme's presentation is right:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atDgnkvzD8IThought experiment: in 100 years or even ten, can you imagine that there will not be tiny little camera robots that can get into the home of every person alive? Wouldn't every single living person be prone to having nude and unflattering, private moments leaked all over the internet?
Socially, if privacy is a construct, then so is the fallout we expect others and ourselves to feel when privacy is violated. To some extent, not all, this is self-inflicted Victorian thinking. To the extent that it's true, part of the answer is, in the words of the brave (lol) Michael Cohen, "So what?" Really, so what? I hope we can get to that kind of reaction to adults having their privacy upended because it just takes so much of the bite out of the problem, the shame that relatively innocent people would experience for something completely out of their control.
As far as the getting it back under control thing, we may also be coming to a point that more technologies are so dangerous or impactful that there becomes a need for more strict control so that powerful tech like miniaturization produces paper trails and the use of such technology comes with an implicit requirement for openness. I don't really care that people can use miniaturization, but I care if they can anonymize it to the extent that we create a lawless society with no remaining means of accountability.
What *will* Russia and North Korea do when it becomes plausible to unleash little robot assassins either in small numbers to target individuals or mass numbers to carry out what is essentially nuclear scale death without nuclear scale fallout and destruction? It is plausible that this is a new facet of WMDs and MAD-based deterrence.
Privacy, robots, and the inevitable slide into world war 3.
267
141