If we can survive the danger of nanotech weapons, wars, and possible global dictatorship, the next biggest controversy to arise from molecular manufacturing may be the loss of privacy.
A recent interview with computer scientist Latanya Sweeney, posted by Scientific American, highlights some of the issues:
Why is privacy versus security becoming such a problem? Why should we even care?(Laughs) Well, one issue is we need privacy. I don't mean political issues. We literally can't live in a society without it. Even in nature animals have to have some kind of secrecy to operate. For example, imagine a lion that sees a deer down at a lake and it can't let the deer know he's there or [the deer] might get a head start on him. And he doesn't want to announce to the other lions [what he has found] because that creates competition. There's a primal need for secrecy so we can achieve our goals.
Privacy also allows an individual the opportunity to grow and make mistakes and really develop in a way you can't do in the absence of privacy, where there's no forgiving and everyone knows what everyone else is doing. There was a time when you could mess up on the east coast and go to the west coast and start over again. That kind of philosophy was revealed in a lot of things we did. In bankruptcy, for example. The idea was, you screwed up, but you got to start over again. With today's technology, though, you basically get a record from birth to grave and there's no forgiveness. And so as a result we need technology that will preserve our privacy. . .
Several years ago, Scott McNealy, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously quipped, "Privacy is dead. Get over it."
Oh privacy is definitely not dead. When people say you have to choose, it means they haven't actually thought the problem through or they aren't willing to accept the answer.
Remember, it's in [McNealy's] interest to say that, because he very much shares that attitude of the computer scientist who built the technology that's invasive; who says, "Well, you want the benefits of my technology, you'll get over privacy". It's exactly the kind of computer scientist we don't want to be graduating in the future. We want the computer scientist who will resolve these kinds of barriers in conflict, identify them and resolve them in their technology design. . .
Back in 2005, we wrote a blog entry that began this way:
Privacy and security are on a collision course. Your desire to be kept safe will soon collide with your wish to be left alone.This warning is often heard. But is it true?
We went on to describe technological and social trends that could be leading us toward what CRN Global Futures Strategist Jamais Cascio calls the "Participatory Panopticon." We agreed with author, scholar, and transparency advocate David Brin, who asserts that we are not required to choose between freedom and security; that, in fact, history shows us that the most open or "transparent" societies -- those with the least emphasis on secrecy and control -- also are the safest.
The interview quoted above, and the SciAm article to which it relates, are not focused primarily on future developments, but on today's privacy vs. security alleged tradeoffs. However, as technology continues racing ahead toward radical new capabilities, the need for discussion, agreement, and understanding about these issues becomes ever more urgent.
Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog
Privacy and security are discussed here, but implied in the subtext of privacy is really freedom, right? The idea that how we behave in privacy is different than in public.
Along the lines of bankruptcy or geographical relocations freedom to pursue "life, liberty and happiness" without the burdens of your history following you?? I don't know that there is a right to anonymity or tabula raza'ing your past. I believe in second chances, but knowing that I'm giving someone one is a part of what it means to build a relationship and trust.
To say there is no forgiveness is not accurate. To say there are consequences for your actions is. Mistakes are something all people make. Hopefully we learn from them and don't repeat them. It is called training. If I talk with someone and they haven't made any mistakes in their life, then I'm VERY highly skeptical that they are being truthful with me or with themselves. Privacy to a point, but not deletion of your past...
Posted by: Eric | July 16, 2007 at 11:55 AM
RE: Participatory Panopticon, see also:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129
especially the last quarter or so where it talks about Flickr and image tagging.
Posted by: Stephen C | July 16, 2007 at 03:08 PM
It definitely would be a difficult task to maintain privacy, once the molecular manufacturing becomes stable and we have all the markets pervaded by products manufactured using MM. Every individual would have his own tools to maintain his higher productivity and every activity of an individual might be recorded inadvertently.
But that is just the external activities. Are we talking about tracking the brain activities and hence the person's thoughts also?
( For that we still would need tools and technology to understand and track a person's thoughts through the brain activities. But my guess is that once MM is stable we would just need two or three decades to achieve this. )
Posted by: Vinayagamoorthy | July 16, 2007 at 09:08 PM