+++
title = "Privacy: The view from 1987 and Antiquity - or why I'm deleting Google,Facebook and Twitter"
author = ["George M Jones"]
publishDate = 2020-10-04
lastmod = 2023-12-06T05:45:56-05:00
tags = ["privacy", "100DaysToOffload"]
categories = ["blog"]
draft = false
+++

## <span class="section-num">1</span> "A History of Private Life" {#a-history-of-private-life}

> There is, I think, an urgent need to protect the essence of
> individuality from headlong technological progress.  For unless we are
> careful, individual men and women may soon be reduced to little more
> than numbers in immense and terrifying data bank.
>
> Georges Duby, Forward to _A History of Private Life_, 1987

I'm in the process of deleting Facebook, Twitter and Google from my
life. I think Duby et al. were on to something a little ahead of their
time.

<a id="figure--pic:privateLife"></a>

{{< figure src="/ox-hugo/private_life.jpg" caption="<span class=\"figure-number\">Figure 1: </span>[A History of Private Life](https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/a-history-of-private-life-from-pagan-rome-to-byzantium_arthur-goldhammer_philippe-aris/288055/item/2915263/?mkwid=%7cdc&pcrid=448915190769&pkw=&pmt=&slid=&plc=&pgrid=104754618896&ptaid=pla-926048762119#idiq=2915263&edition=2266565)" >}}

Post 30 of #100DaysToOffload <https://100daystooffload.com/>

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## <span class="section-num">2</span> What's bothering me {#what-s-bothering-me}

It takes a lot of work to change your email provider of 15
years.  You loose contacts when you ditch Facebook (that guy
I've not seen since 3rd grade..).  Twitter is, well, a thing.
Just ask the President ('nuf said ?)  So why go the trouble?
What is it about privacy that gets me and so many people spun up
to the point that we will spend time fighting what is almost
certainly a loosing battle against Big Brother, Big Internet and
Big Advertising?

There are many reasons, but I think they all center around what
it means to be human:

-   We want to be left alone sometimes
-   We want space to be ourselves
-   We want our thoughts to be our thoughts (and we want to have
    them before the machine learning algorithms that are tracking
    us have them)
-   We want the freedom to think, act, feel, love and hate ("[Odi
    et amo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_85) ...") as we see fit, at least inside our own heads
-   We want to be able to work out life for ourselves
-   We want space to think, to grow, to make mistakes and correct
    them, or even to be free to persist in our chosen errors and
    delusions. "To err is human..."

Something about using the current set of "free" Big Internet
offerings where, "If you're not paying for it you ARE the
product" violates the space we so desperately need.


## <span class="section-num">3</span> Back to the big thinkers {#back-to-the-big-thinkers}

Enough of my ramblings.  Back to the deep thinkers who put
together the encyclopedic _A History of Private Life_ in 1987
without (gasp) Google or anything better than a IBM-PC running
DOS...

> ...at all times and in all places a clear commonsensical distinction
> has been made the public --- that which is open to the community and
> subject to the authority of its magistrates --- and the private.  In
> other words, a clearly defined realm is set aside for that part of
> existence for which _every language has a word equivalent to
> "private"_, a zone of immunity to which we may fall back or retreat, a
> place where we may set aside arms and armor needed in the public
> place, relax, take our ease, and lie about unshielded...this is the
> place where the family thrives, the realm of domesticity; it is also
> the realm of secrecy.   The private realm contains our most precious
> possessions, which belong only to ourselves, which concern nobody
> else, and which may not be divulged...
>
> Georges Duby, Forward to _A History of Private Life_, 1987

Is he right?  Do _you_ have the space you need to "protect the essence
of individuality from headlong technological progress"?