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someone's watching
Mar. 12th, 2007 01:52 pmI've talked elsewhere about my thoughts on privacy--that it's an over-rated, artificial concept our culture clings to without real analysis. And Geodesica: Descent features a society in which privacy is actually illegal. (Surprise, surprise: in my mind, it's not dystopian at all.)
So here's an interesting article by Emily Nussbaum on this very topic, pointing out what may be a fundamental societal shift happening right before our eyes.
Quote: "It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years--you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about 'jungle rhythms.' ... [I]n the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk."
It's worth a read, and not just for spec fic writers building their version of the 2050s. This is the world we're living in right now, after all. Us oldies just haven't noticed yet.
Another quote: "For anyone over 30, this may be pretty hard to take. Perhaps you smell brimstone in the air, the sense of a devil’s bargain... It’s not as if those fifties squares griping about Elvis were wrong, after all. As Clay Shirky points out, 'All that stuff the elders said about rock and roll? They pretty much nailed it. Miscegenation, teenagers running wild, the end of marriage!'"
If the current generation is actively (if unwittingly) re-writing the rules of privacy and social interaction so wildly, what does that mean in the long-run? I don’t know. These things are so hard to predict in advance. It might usher in an era of two-way transparency, where "Big Brothers" can be spied on just as much as they can spy on us. Or it might have the opposite effect.
Maybe the baby-boomers will keep running the world, but the young folk will be too busy looking at each other to notice.
So here's an interesting article by Emily Nussbaum on this very topic, pointing out what may be a fundamental societal shift happening right before our eyes.
Quote: "It’s been a long time since there was a true generation gap, perhaps 50 years--you have to go back to the early years of rock and roll, when old people still talked about 'jungle rhythms.' ... [I]n the past ten years, a new set of values has sneaked in to take its place, erecting another barrier between young and old. And as it did in the fifties, the older generation has responded with a disgusted, dismissive squawk."
It's worth a read, and not just for spec fic writers building their version of the 2050s. This is the world we're living in right now, after all. Us oldies just haven't noticed yet.
Another quote: "For anyone over 30, this may be pretty hard to take. Perhaps you smell brimstone in the air, the sense of a devil’s bargain... It’s not as if those fifties squares griping about Elvis were wrong, after all. As Clay Shirky points out, 'All that stuff the elders said about rock and roll? They pretty much nailed it. Miscegenation, teenagers running wild, the end of marriage!'"
If the current generation is actively (if unwittingly) re-writing the rules of privacy and social interaction so wildly, what does that mean in the long-run? I don’t know. These things are so hard to predict in advance. It might usher in an era of two-way transparency, where "Big Brothers" can be spied on just as much as they can spy on us. Or it might have the opposite effect.
Maybe the baby-boomers will keep running the world, but the young folk will be too busy looking at each other to notice.
