Digital Smarts - Is the Death of Privacy a Good Thing?

In an interesting blog entry, futurist Dominic Basulto writes about how privacy is becoming a passing value and outlines his ideas on why he believes that is a good thing. While many people think of privacy as a right, he asks the reader to consider that it may not even be a social norm anymore. He believes that privacy is a “net drag on innovation” and that “open, networked connected societies tend to develop faster.” He further hypothesizes that passing more privacy laws will not be effective, reminding us that in the analog era, privacy intrusions happened rarely, if ever; in the digital era, they happen daily and in many different iterations. That means that legal remedies for privacy invasion are always going to lag behind the invasions themselves and the sheer number of intrusions may make enforcement impossible. While you may not agree with all that Basulto says in his piece, it is worth reading because we live in an era when hackings are a common occurrence, government surveillance is real, and our personal records have the potential to end up in the wrong hands. This all could mean that a collective redefinition of the concept of privacy may soon be coming.