Abundance And Scarcity In Privacy
from the something-worth-thinking-about dept
As you know, we talk an awful lot about understanding abundance and scarcity around here, and how that's really important if you want to understand what the future holds for a variety of different businesses. Failing to understand abundance and scarcity is a recipe for disaster these days. And the more you look, the more you realize that technology is creating new abundances and new scarcities in all sorts of places. Tons of industries are either already experiencing this (entertainment, content, publishing, news, software, etc.) or are about to (energy, health care, finance, etc.). But it's also showing up in other realms as well, and Jeff Jarvis has a smart post about how it's impacting privacy. He summarizes it in a very catchy manner:Once-abundant privacy is now scarce. Once-scarce publicness is now abundant.The concept of "publicness" is one that's been getting greater attention lately (Jarvis is writing a book on the subject, apparently), but it's this recognition of the flipside of privacy. As Jarvis notes, it used to be really "scarce." It was very difficult to have large parts of your life public. It only happened for a very small number of people, and involved a lot of gatekeepers. That's no longer the case.
The economics of abundant publicness mean that the old gatekeepers -- editors, agents, producers, publishers, broadcasters, the entire media industry -- overnight lost their power. That's why they're so upset. That's why they keep complaining about all these amateurs taking over their sacred turf -- because they are. What they thought was valuable -- their control -- now had no value. They can't sell their casting couches and presses on craigslist for nothin'. They are being beat by those who break up their control and hand it out for free (Google, craigslist, Facebook, YouTube, etc.).I don't totally agree with this. I think he takes the argument slightly too far in the name of simplicity. That is, I still think that many of the jobs carried out by those old gatekeepers -- editors, agents, producers, publishers, broadcasters, the entire media industry -- actually do still have tremendous value. But a lot of how it works has changed. The problem is when they focus solely on the gatekeeping function as the value (which is Jarvis' point -- many really hung their hat solely on the gatekeeping function), then it's difficult for them to adapt. Those who focused (and still do) on providing greater overall value beyond the gatekeeping still do have tremendous value. As proof that Jarvis believes that, just look at his post about that new book he's working on where he talks up his "brilliant editor" at publishing giant HarperCollins. There's value there, it's just not in gatekeeping.
Abundant publicness also creates new value. Google search is made up of that value. Twitter movie chatter predicting box-office success is that value. Annotations on maps, restaurant reviews, health trends, customer desires -- and on and on -- all find value in our publicness and so new companies are being built on that value. That is why it is in the interests of both companies and customers to be public and why privacy -- when it does compete, when it discourages publicness -- becomes a nuisance for them.
The other point in all this, which Jarvis mentions more as an aside, is that this is really just looking at the economics of free from a different angle. That is, the reason that such "publicness" is so abundant is because it's so easy for people to spread their works (and share the works of others) for free. And that increases the value of other things that you might do.
Jarvis focuses on the "publicness" side of the equation, rather than the privacy part of it, but the idea that "once abundant privacy is now scarce," is also fascinating to think about as well, and certainly fits with various themes that have been communicated over and over again -- often as simply as Scott McNealy's famous: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." I don't think we've quite reached the stage of the David Brin-style world where radical, extreme transparency replaces privacy, but if you want to extrapolate out some interesting scenarios, it's fun to at least pull the lever that far in thinking about what it would mean.
Instead, I actually think that it highlights the theme of the post we recently had about how everyone has something to hide. As privacy becomes more and more scarce, those things we have to hide actually become increasingly valuable as well. Being able to keep that privacy increases in value. And that is going to lead to some very interesting and controversial business models and situations over time.
It's all a very interesting subject that I'm sure we'll be talking about a lot around here over the next few years.
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Filed Under: abundance, economics, privacy, publicness, scarcity
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How About "Publicity"?
He says "publicity" is too "freighted with marketing meaning," but the marketing sense is correct. When they go to bars to see and be seen, people are seeking publicity, marketing themselves to the audiences there. When they Tweet or post pictures online, same deal.
Scott Cleland made up a word, "publicacy," rather than publicity.
I think these folks are complexifying concepts that are fairly simple.
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Re: How About "Publicity"?
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Thinking out loud about the substance of his post, I also concluded that I don’t think talking about these two human interests as being *categorically* scarce or abundant is actually helpful. So I seem to want complexification along a different axis.
Now can I get a shout-out for coming up with the stupid verb "complexify"? I'm having a really good time with the irony of doing that while I go all primly semantic on Jarvis! (Chronic joke-explainer, I am...)
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(still hate the word 'orientate', tho. seems an over-complexification of 'orient').
'Publicness'...ugh. De-privatating? Unprivation? Publicating? Anyway...
I know my info is being mined all the time, and yet I still hate it. Especially with the internet (and businesses too, I suppose, like credit card issuers). I'm not the sharpest tool in the tech shed nor do I have hours to waste reading every obtuse legalese'd thing thrown at me, and they prey on that, or lock me into it with a yards-long TOS or EULA or privacy statements I have to agree to so I can proceed. I'm not necessarily afraid of ID theft or being stalked or anything (I stay clear of Facebook and the like), it just...bugs.
I'm important enough to mine but when I have an issue with it I suddenly don't matter.
I've been in a situation where I was tasked with helping someone who'd been impersonated for obtaining several credit cards, and I know what it's like to have nothing to help out on your end but those guilty of making such a thing possible have all the information - and they won't give it to you, your private information is now private from you! Those kinds of gatekeepers should scare the hell out of anyone.
Jarvis crystallized a great point, for me, regarding the changeover for those making a living from publicizing people, however he wants to term it. Might we see a blossoming privatizing industry? How to stay off-the-grid type services?
Oh, I don't like that at all. I wish I hadn't gone there.
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Defining Orwell's doublespeak.
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Re: How About "Publicity"?
I agree with you that "publicness" includes a marketing element, but I also agree with Jarvis that "publicity" is not the right term. People who "Tweet or post photos online" are engaged in self-promotion rather than publicity in my personal lexicon. The term "publicity" is too intertwined with traditional notions of commercial advertising to be appropriate here. I am also of the opinion that "publicacy" is at least as awkward as "publicness" if not more so.
We should start a campaign here in the Techdirt forum to come up with a better word for this phenomenon than "publicness" or "publicacy."
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Re: Re: How About "Publicity"?
One word: Privateness.
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Re: Re: How About "Publicity"?
The Publickening. (that reads/sounds bad)
Out-in-the-Openeering...
I'm leaning towards publification. Budding artists need to go out an publificate themselves to get noticed.
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Maybe I like it because it sounds similar to pontificate, I don't know. I don't really want to question why I like it; I just do.
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Another favorite non-word making its way into the lexicon: "conversate."
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I also have to disagree with one of your statements: changing a profile status to "single" on FB does not "give publicity" to that fact. It seems more appropriate to say that the person has "publicized" that fact. An individual person does not typically "give publicity" unless that person is Oprah, they "seek publicity." Hence the saying, "there's no such thing as bad publicity."
This is the crux of the problem, the term "publicity" has become too intertwined with the economic agenda embodied by the advertising and marketing industries to be helpful in a discussion about privacy issues. These days, "publicity" is generally understood as being about products rather than people as individual beings. Some people want to become products (I am looking at you Paris Hilton, Kim Kardashian, etc.) but most people do not share that agenda.
That said, I am still leaning towards "publification" as an alternative to "publicity."
(sorry if this posts twice - technical malfunction)
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Re: How About "Publicity"?
More than anything else, I think that the fact that there are at least 4 people that publicly wrestled with some sort of neologism to describe this phenomenon tells us that the English language was lacking a proper descriptor.
"Publicity" just doesn't sit well enough to encapsulate the concept for many. As Jarvis said: It's too "freighted with meaning".
From January:
http://blog.ericreasons.com/2010/01/publicy-neologism-up-for-grabs.html
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privacy isnt scrace
see proof is in my post
and many people FIGHT hard for anonymous
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p.s.
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anonymity through volume
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Re: The word "free"
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Re:
Yes, I am spending more money than ever on media, but as you said, it is going to monthly connectivity fees, etc. It's no longer going to content creators (e.g., book authors, magazine publishers). And other expenses have also gone up (e.g., fuel costs, health insurance), so what might have gone to content creators in other forms (e.g., concerts) is now going to basic living expenses.
My life is no more "free" than it ever was. I'm redistributing the same amount of money, but giving some bill collectors more and others less. Whatever gets freed up in one place ends up going somewhere else, and usually not in the same industries. As one thing gets cheaper, something else (usually a necessity) gets more expensive.
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I got my undergraduate degree in economics. Economists often differ in their theories.
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Well your theories really suck.
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Yes, it's true that your money gets redistributed but there is also a marginal propensity to save. Say something that you spend $30 a month was all of a sudden provided to you for free. Now you're not spending that $30 a month so your net income has just increased by $30 a month. You will naturally spend some of it and save some of it.
If one thing that you spend money on gets cheaper you will save some of the money that you no longer have to spend on that thing and you will spend some of it. Some of it may be spent to get more of that same thing, some of it may be spent on other things.
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So, if I make $500/wk and quit buying a subscription @$30/wk, I now make $530/wk?
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I'm working on an economics piece right now on art and the gift economy. It's been covered before, but I notice that it's starting to creep back into music discussions again, so I want to explore what it will mean for artists and whether or not it is sustainable. The gift economy is different than pay-what-you-want or "give some stuff away for free and sell other stuff." It's based on giving it all away. Burning Man is probably the best example operating right now.
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I have no problem at all with the concept. I think it is more the reality than monetizing music.
But I don't think the charity model is actually what a gift economy is.
In just a year or two we have gone from excitement about having people running their music careers as small businesses to now some people talking about a gift economy where you don't expect any financial return.
So the bigger question is how the artist survives when no money is coming in. In some situations, like Burning Man and small scale gift communities, no money changes hands. You share what you have and it's all supposed to work out. It's a bit utopian, but whenever capitalism starts getting ugly, it begins to look attractive again.
What really necessary for a gift economy is a strong sense of community. You need to actively be involved with what the people around you are doing.
What I try to do is to encourage more friendly talk in these discussions precisely because getting along is something that tends to be necessary if you want to replace money and government with user-generated communities. You have to work out your differences in ways that don't polarize people or it doesn't work. Eliminating laws and government usually requires replacing that with active participation. It can be more work than just letting the government handle it. Sometimes you have to meet with your neighbors nightly or weekly to get things worked out. It's like being married but to a bigger group of people.
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This is what happens when arts funding is outsourced
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So exactly what's the difference?
"It can be more work than just letting the government handle it."
How so? How exactly does the govt handle it and how does the governments handling of it not require work?
If anything the govts imposed monopolies have made it more expensive and more work to handle it, now you need a pricey license to broadcast your work and you can't get it on cableco without first going through the govt imposed monopolist gatekeepers.
Not to mention what the collection societies have done to make it more expensive to get your music out in restaurants even if you agreed with the restaurant owners that they can play your music for free (because then these collection societies demand payment or else threaten with expensive lawsuits under the pretext that someone might infringe).
So please tell, how has the govt made the process easier. They seem to only have made it more difficult if you ask me.
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So please tell, how has the govt made the process easier. They seem to only have made it more difficult if you ask me.
I'm not talking about copyright. I'm talking about any function that the government has assumed. Take prisons, for example. If the local government isn't running it, then the community has to decide how to deal with disruptive people. It may be easier to pay the government to hire police and set up a prison than to ask each person in the community to personally chip in enough money to set up a prison.
There are many tasks in life that need to be done, and either you tax people and have the government do it, or each time you need something done, you need to get the community together, talk about it, price everything out, take up a collection to pay someone to do it, or you need to ask people in the community to take on the jobs themselves.
If you have ever lived in a community with a home owners association, you may find that the HOA is actually more stringent than your local government or zoning commission. The HOA may dictate what color to paint your house, whether or not you can have Christmas decorations, etc.
I live in a big condo complex. The HOA meets, decides what needs to be repaired, and then bills us. So in any given year, our HOA fees go up or down (usually up) to pay for whatever the HOA has decided needs to be improved.
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Emergency Response
Sure, they could use triangulation, but that also takes time to invoke since it's not done on every cell call to 911.
If not done so already, there should be a system where anyone can "register" their cell's number with 1 or 2 default locations: home & work.
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Re: Emergency Response
And fewer battery problems (in my experience), or none if it's corded. And better reliability. And potentially cheaper, especially for heavy usage. And easier to use as a phone for a whole household rather than one person. And easier to have many phones in different rooms for the same phone number. But other than that, yeah cell phones are better.
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