Ghost in the Wire

A few years back, before TechTV mutated into the hideous beast known as G4TV, I recall watching an episode of their Big Thinkers, a show that profiled/interviewed big names in technology, in which virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier casually remarked that we may reach a point when a right to privacy should no longer play such a central role in organizing our social and political life. I've seen similar comments from Lanier since then, comments in which he stresses a parallel diminution of privacy, where the government, corporations, and people would give up their privacy, and move towards a more fundamental transparency, together.

Over the years, Lanier's fairly casual interview comment has really stuck with me, and over time, has forced me to re-evaluate whether or not something like privacy is enviable or appropriate or even feasible in the long-term. I know the pandora's box this implies, since many of our most important civic relations, a number of our crucial court cases (especially the progressive ones), and our ingrained distrust of totalitarian states combine to posit an almost inviolable belief in the right to privacy. But it seems to me that the more connected our technologies become, and the more connectivist our inclinations, the more problematic becomes privacy.

At its core, the Internet is as much about tracking as it is transmission, and the whole Web 2.0 meme reveals, plainly I think, that current and future technological advances and killer apps will come about through collective interactions that dispense with privacy as a prerequisite, either because the application depends upon coalescing and managing the data streams that mark the moment of interaction, and because more and more normatively, people seem content to divulge private information for the sake of private and public gain. Besides, most of the data that is being used to assess our lifestyle and consumption habits, our hobbies and our family life, our educational and laboring successes and failures, is data that we ourselves provided. This wasn't our fault necessarily; the discussions of what was being lost in the wake of this collective archivization of personal data came late to the table, and to be honest, rarely ever got plated along with our happy consumer meals. And while I find myself saddened at the subsequent dissolution of basic, private information and the rise of the so-called datasphere, I also know that the data genie is already out of the bottle, so to speak, and I'm not sure there's a way to conveniently shuttle him back inside, at least not without juridical methods that I find objectionable.

Here's a proposal: I want to use 37Signal's Writeboard in an effort at writing something collaborative, and to do so for two reasons. First, because I believe it will produce something novel, interesting, and of high quality; and second, because I'm curious about the experience and sense of authorship that such an endeavor might engender.

The topic for the experiment: "Delimiting Links." I'm interested in trying to understand the concept of a "link," either through definition or phenomenological investigation or even something akin to deconstruction. I'm thinking specifically about hypertext links, but I imagine it may be impossible to discuss them without some allusion to other links, or at least an explanation as to how they earned their moniker. So I will start with a basic paragraph outlining some of the problems regarding adequately conceptualizing links, but if you believe there are texts that should be engaged, arguments that need to be made, basic sentence structures or word choices that need to be changed, feel free.

Now here's how it works. I've set up the Writeboard already, and if you want to contribute or even monitor this little experiment, just comment with your email address or send me an email and I will have the service send you an invite. Hopefully this will prove an interesting and rewarding endeavor.

And by "popular," I mean "lone," as in one person, just one. But he's a very popular person, umm, I think. Where art Lego thou, you ask? Here I am.

Introducing Helena Lynn, the next generation of ghosts in the wire.

Mom and Dad (that's me) couldn't be happier.