We Live In Public
Back in the last Internet bubble, Josh Harris created an experimental art project he called We Live In Public. To quote from the link I just gave you:
We Live In Public is an experiment created by Josh Harris. Similar to the tv/internet project Big Brother, he has placed 32 robotic cameras and microphones throughout his home (including the toilet), which he shares with his girlfriend Tanya Corrin. The phones are tapped as well. Their lives are broadcast over the internet 24/7. Watchers can talk to Josh and Tanya as well as each other in a chatroom on the site. Aside from Josh And Tanya, there is a whole cast of characters that make cameo appearances in the loft as well as in chat
As Tom Watson said in this post last year:
Turns out, Josh Harris's crazy experiment with Web-connected cameras in his New York loft was prescient.
I think everything Josh Harris has ever done is prescient. Crazy too. But that's not the point of this post.
We are living in public more and more every day. It's becoming the norm. Our kids out their personal lives on their MySpace and Facebook pages. We blog about what we did this weekend and where we ate last night.
I use the AttentionTrust recorder to record all of my clickstream and share them with others (on this blog and via the attentionsoft client).
Yesterday I got a voice mail from Jason Calacanis. Turns out he had seen my morning's clickstream on Seth Goldstein's computer out at Web 2.0. He left me a message about a particular real estate web page that I had been looking at. It took me a second to figure out what was going on. Fortunately the AttentionTrust has an off button. I think I'll be using it more often now. Once bitten twice shy.
Technology allows us to broadcast our lives so easily. Then one day you wake up and Facebook is telling the world that you broke up with your girlfriend and you get pissed. There's a limit for sure.
I have never put a camera in my toilet and have no intention to do so, but I have put pictures of my kids on this blog and regretted it when the comments got mean. I've let the world see my clickstream and seen the downside of that too.
I am a fan of transparency and will continue to push the envelope of what is sensible. But there is a line and when I cross it, I will pull back.
Good for you Fred.
Privacy will be the most sought after luxury item of the 21st century.
Posted by: Brian Clark | November 10, 2006 at 08:59 AM
That is one of my biggest problems with MyBlogLogs. Sometimes I really don't want people to know I visit their site...
Posted by: Chartreuse | November 10, 2006 at 09:19 AM
This is why I lie a lot on my blog.
Who am I, really....
Posted by: jackson | November 10, 2006 at 11:31 AM
I wrote a (pretty good I think) series on anonymity and privacy after a friend got bitten by the "oh, this is all online" a few weeks ago. First post is here: http://engtech.wordpress.com/2006/10/18/web-anonymity-101-digital-breadcrumbs/
Posted by: engtech | November 11, 2006 at 04:42 AM
It's The Transparent Generation, baby.
Posted by: Mike Abundo | November 11, 2006 at 11:37 PM
Thanks, Fred, for staking out the frontier. I hate that you had the issue with the kids pics, but it did give me a heads up. I haven't played with Vox, yet, but I've hoped that its access controls might enable selective disclosure of more private info. to select groups.
Living in public has its upsides, though. My friends and I can often just start talking about something we know we've all been thinking about because we've seen it in each others' del.icio.us links.
Posted by: Coty | November 15, 2006 at 11:34 AM