Steven Johnson, one of my favorite non-academic, non-scientist authors, is about to publish his seventh book – Where Good Ideas Come From — and he’s written down a few thoughts in the latest Time magazine on privacy and oversharing one’s life like prostate cancer, colon cancer, or what you had for lunch.
In our house, we have built a set of improvised rules about how much of family life to make public: I tweet or blog little anecdotes about the kids, but don’t mention them by name. We never post pictures of them, except to our inner circle of friends on Facebook. When they’re old enough for their own Facebook account, we’ll let them decide for themselves how public they want to be with their lives.
And that’s the point, really: these are decisions now. In the old days, life was set by default to be private unless you happened to be famous. Now, we have to choose whether we want to venture into the valley of intimate strangers, and how exactly we want to live there.
The subject of privacy really hits home for me. The Kid was recently a target of “analog” bullying, “cyber” bullying, and sexual harassment, all of which necessitated the need to log a formal complaint with the high school and the school district. The question is: What do I want to say about all this?
