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Loss Of Privacy In Quiet: We Live In Public

1367 Words6 Pages

One of they key issues brought to light in the documentary We Live in Public is the issue of privacy and how it relates to our experience on the Internet. Josh Harris, a young internet entrepreneur, decided to use his millions in the conduct shockingly prophetic experiments that were intended to model the loss of privacy that would occur with increased use of the Internet. In Harris’s experiments, participants were subjected to 24-hour surveillance, losing any semblance of privacy. One of his experiments. Quiet: We Live in Public was a closed, underground community in which the participants were followed by cameras 24/7. As one might have expected, the loss of privacy that arose as a result of Harris’s experiment had a negative affect on the …show more content…

Although it is true that being in the constant presence of other people contributed to the disastrous effects of the experiment, the root of the privacy loss that occurred in Quiet was a result of ‘losing face.’ Naturally, when constantly being watched by someone or something, people perceive a loss of privacy. “People are concerned about privacy; they are afraid that the digital systems they use on an everyday basis may bring unwanted effects into their lives” (Lahlou, 2008, p. 300). In his article, Lahlou presents an alternate way of viewing privacy that better evaluates why we perceive a loss of privacy in the first place. Lahlou points out that “Privacy was initially understood as ‘the right to be left alone’ and sometimes ‘encryption’” (Lahlou, 2008, p. 312). However, Lahlou suggests that we perceive privacy loss not only because we are not left alone but because we have to act or be confined to a role that we do not feel comfortable with in that given situation. Lahlou calls this “losing-face.”
Lahlou’s idea of the face closely resembles Erving Goffman’s idea of social interaction as a performance, complete with a front stage and a backstage. Goffman tells us that when interacting socially, people “perform.” While in what he calls the “front region,” a person conforms themselves to the standards that a given situation requires. The person makes sure to enhance certain characteristics of themselves while in the “front region,” with some of their characteristics suppressed in the “back

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