We are bored. We are desperate for human contact. We have lives to live, work to do, health concerns.
We are living in a pandemic world, hopefully soon to be a post-pandemic one, but the changes are likely here to stay.
So the great question right now is – what now?
Our lives have moved more online than ever before during the Covid-19 outbreak. While we are likely to, at some point, overcome the pandemic to the extent where interaction will be possible again as it used to be, we have two new factors to consider.
One, we have developed a greater awareness of the dangers that a pandemic, and its associated behaviours (going out, being around others etc) can subject us to.
Two, we have uncovered a great many options online to make life, socialising and work easier, even without any consideration of the potential new pandemic, new waves of Covid, a much delayed vaccine or simply the PTSD that may urge us to reconsider doing things that we used to enjoy.
At the same time, the providers of tech used to make our lives easier right now are likely to wish to continue to offer it to us, meaning that we can expect some advertising aimed towards making us stick to at least some of the practices we have developed during the isolation period once it ends (hopefully for good).
As many of these changes are in fact enormously practical, they are likely to succeed; with telehealth, our busy schedule may seem less busy. With fitness apps, we can find those five minutes, throughout the day, and make them into ten, then twenty minutes or more (given the alarming amount of serious complications for people who are overweight and have covid, as well as the overall growing weight of the population, that is indeed a good thing). Our pet health may be similarly provided for. We are becoming used to social life at a distance, making it perhaps less odd to get drinks with a friend – or a virtual lunch with a business partner – on two different continents.
Our lives have not ended, where social interaction is concerned…they have changed drastically, but they have also introduced us to many possibilities that we were less comfortable about before, much like the telephone changed letter writing.
But however good some of these changes are, there remains the question of privacy. Privacy is, has been and will likely remain not only the chief concern for us all, clients and providers alike, but will likely continue to be redefined throughout the near future. On one hand, privacy concerns are valid; they represent not only our right to a certain amount of anonymity, a right not to be constantly observed, or to have our information harvested in a way that betrays too much about us, whether by a single person (a stalker), a group (hackers or any other group, legitimate or not) or even government (where and in case the information were to be used to target specific people for specific traits, such as gender/sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political preferences, etc. – the list is long and reads as who is who in human rights violations).
On the other, privacy concerns often fall foul of being associated with conspiracy theorists and groups, with anti-establishment “watchdog” groups (who may also consider some conspiracy theories as valid) and groups, bodies and individuals who may have legitimate concerns but understand too little about the data used and technology used to do so to make a worthy contribution.
The situation calls for balance. This balance is necessary, but may be difficult to achieve, as we live in a highly polarised society at present; moreover, we tend to perceive many problems from an all-or-nothing perspective rather than through shades of grey. Collecting data from informants, for instance, is an anthropologist’s job as well. We collect data, generally anonymously, to create a relevant and reliable picture of people, be it on a small scale or a large scale (up to civilisation or even globally). We do the same with archaeology, but with more difficulty, because there, what we have may be very incomplete; at the same time, however, the data gathered by anthropologists via informants may be biased because informants are people. Even the data gathered electronically may not give us a full picture…but all of this data collecting is, in fact, an already extant part of how we learn about people.
History teaches us that it can be used for good or for bad. But in either case, the fault is not in data…it is in what we think is good or bad, who we portray as Other.
The debate regarding privacy must involve this discussion, on all sides. There must be responsibility, accountability; but there must also be greater awareness of what data is used and can or should be used so that we can continue not only to live, but to also learn about each other. Privacy is a human right; but to exercise it to its full extent, we must first understand what endangers it or could endanger it, as well as how it will continue to change, semiotically, as our technology progresses, and what this means for not only our social perception but also our laws and human rights in general.