Finally… an article that starts to get more into the heart of the matter…

In Case About Google’s Secrets, Yours Are Safe By Adam Liptak.
Google’s fight with the government over search records has almost nothing to do with privacy and more to do with trade secrets.

And… I don’t agree that this has “almost nothing” to do with privacy.

When does individual thought become part of collective thought? When does collective thought become “public”?

And… I find it interesting that this article is relegated to the “technology” section of the New York Times. Since when are issues of thought a technological discussion?

And… to throw fodder into this “discussion”… here’s a link to an Associated Press article that I read about through MIT’s Technology Review… Art without Frames: Museums must attract younger audiences with new media and interactive art..

Not only does this article bring “art” into the discussion but, for me, it raises the question of when does “virtual” become “real”? By this latter I mean… when do we allow/consider/permit our actions in a virtual world to become objectified, commodified, qualified? When and who has the right to share information about these actions?

If you read the article linked to above, you will notice that there is a “rate this article” box at the end of it. It’s a “standard” reply form. We have become very used to these sorts of requests. They are readily used by very many sites. If I were to rate this or some other article as “Great! Interesting!” does this mean that I agree with the contents? Does this mean that I buy into the topic? If some data analyst were to gather statistics about how many people found “this” topic interesting would s/he be able to say anything about the why of the interest?

Ummm… no. This type of response is, to me, one step up from “no brain” tracking software. Where before people used to say “1000 people viewed this page” now we can say “1000 people viewed this page and 389 of those who bothered to rate it found it interesting”. The why of the interest is still not accessible or available. And in this way our thoughts are still individually private even though where-are-thoughts-wandered-off-to isn’t. Data gathering is data gathering. Data sharing is data sharing but…

Connected data is information. Whether a human makes the connections, whether software makes the connections, connected data becomes information. When does this “information” leave the private realm? How do we as individuals consider the information most online bookstores give us through the simple connection of “Other people who bought this book also bought…”. And how do businesses consider this information? Is it private to them or can other businesses make use of it given that it is in the “public” realm? And… does accessible mean “public”?

Now… what about eBay? Here you (individual you, collective you, business you, government you…) can access selling and buying history, selling and buying performance ratings and the why of these ratings if people take the time to provide them. This information is public if the seller/buyer wishes to let it be so and most do. And… this open-ness is — according to me — is what made this community.

Connected information is knowledge. Trust comes through knowledge and eBay allows buyers/sellers to access information and turn it into knowledge that they can then judge trustworthy or not. This was absolutely brilliant as a concept. The success of this has changed many people’s lives. But what about now?

I have noticed that on eBay now, more and more people are indentifiying their information as private. The community is highly competitive (it is afterall an auction site) and winning, business values are becoming “more important”. This is particularly true since the “trust” that initially had to come through the buyer/seller “feedback” information now can come through the recently developed “other channels” (bonded sellers, authentication of other sorts) and insurances of the highly valued monetary type.

So… not only are we not clear on when data should remain private, we haven’t even begun the discussions on shared information or knowledge. Nor have we begun to even name “collective data” or information or knowledge or wisdom. We do still equate accessible with “public”. Issues of privacy, issues of collective privacy, issues of collective privacy when turned into some sort of “virtual” action need to be discussed. When does what I think, what I buy, how I approach art and who I share this information with no longer belong to “me” — even if the “me” is collective?

And, a last note… I see connected knowledge as wisdom. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were working in that realm?