Thursday, September 27, 2012
Private is Public
Google me. You will discover that I won an essay contest, got a 30+ on my ACT, ran slowly in all my 5k races, and made All-State Academic in cross country. I never posted this information. I’ve never met the people who did. Strangers have the power to make private information public without permission. Most information is dormant like mine: unheard, unseen and completely harmless. But for those in the public eye, private is public. Google 47 percent. You will discover that Mitt Romney made some incriminating remarks about Obama’s supporters. Surely Romney never posted this information nor met the person who did. But months after these remarks were posted, Romney’s campaign was impacted. Privacy is near unattainable in the information age. Choose a public life only with full knowledge of the risk.
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Here's my problem: it's not just that privacy is being made public, it's that people twist what others say in private BEFORE they make it public. Can anyone believe anything made public after that? It's really hard to, which makes the world turn very cynical. Are we ever going to have honesty in the campaigning world? Well, we might have honest candidates with honest people, but then their campaigning gets twisted by the dishonest media that's more popularly watched, so all that honesty seems to go to waste. At least it pays in the eternal perspective.
ReplyDeleteJust assume everything you ever do will be known by everyone.
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