Are You Free To Be Forgotten? Sergey Miller 6/23/14Phil. Social Media

How many social media accounts do you have?» Consider the world you live in today, the

technologies that surround your life, and then further consider what it means to live a private life. Is there any conflict between this age of technology and the right to have privacy for the individual or even groups of people?

» This presentation aims to illuminate the reader to one of the fundamental questions of the twenty-first century- what counts as private and what occurs when one ‘shares’ using social media -either voluntarily or otherwise.

» Let’s start with this TEDX Talk

» Let’s consider some problems the previous video entertained

There are not many who are un-identifiable

Big data and high volume data collection knows more about your history than even you do

Collection of data takes anonymity out of the job hiring process and other occasions where one may rely on such things. This is an example of the Eurydice and Orpheus myth; particularly in connection with looking into one’s past

Digital tattooing can last longer than the one’s people put on their bodies

» One’s digital profiles, images, and history lasts longer and becomes more real than oneself

» What is at stake is not simply one’s right to represent oneself the way one feels they should be represented, but rather, it is the image of oneself outlasting the one’s actual presence

» This is not a new problem. However, todays technologies and social media makes one’s life seem to be under blinding spotlights. One becomes immortal and does not have the right to become forgotten or really remembered in any significant way that is not of their own making.

» How much information is being kept about oneself and how traceable are you today?

» How relevant is the previous video?

» Consider a modern example of the type of ‘machine’ that is represented in the popular TV show ‘Person of Interest’.

» Anyone can take pictures and share them with others. Anyone can upload videos and share the ‘private’ realm of one’s existence. Cameras are most literally everywhere, especially in big cities throughout the country. All this is in the name of security, but who will secure us from the securers?

» It is unlikely that we will have protagonists (like the one’s on Person of Interest) who will sort through what is relevant and irrelevant for certain agencies, companies, and people to ‘know’ and who will seek to ensure that power can become balanced and retrieved by ordinary citizens.

» What is happening today? Government agencies, employers, and companies are buying, trading, and selling information about you; this is to be done without discretion and without checks and balances

» Those who have been called ‘whistleblowers’ have been out-casted, also in the name of security- think Edward Snowden and Julian Assange- for vocalizing this idea.

» The dystopian world of fictional literature creates what can be considered the most thought provoking examples of living in a world without privacy, but ensures complete ‘security’

» The trade-offs for a secure world (one where perverted notions of justice and law becomes the center of society) are always worse than a world where these ‘lawlessness’ and civil disobedience is present. Is that not true?

» Many believe if one has nothing to hide then one has nothing to fear from a world of all-seeing technology controlled by big business, government, and private investors. However, consider this logic in the background of Orwell’s 1984. This work by George Orwell gives the message that information gathering is not about the information, but rather concerns the fact that they can have that information without dissent and use it for their own discretion. To have that right( to have much knowledge both publicly known and privately held) and power over someone is more important than having whatever bits of information one has collected, which is usually useless, about the person in question.

» Privacy mean criminality in the Orwellian universe. Moral, ethical, and the continuation of fundamental human rights are what is at stake in this new world. Simply saying this does little to really ascertain the scope and importance of the problem.

» Many people’s response to the knowledge of being monitored and recorded is to run away in some manner. They believe that this can be accomplished by a systematic means of ‘unplugging’; or they refuse acknowledging that such social networking can have the consequences listed on the previous slides.

» Denial is perhaps the most predictable of all human responses. Furthermore, being overly protective and ‘secretive’ will only make you a person of interest far beyond others who are ‘willing’ to share.

» At the same time, we do not have the luxury of despair.

» This accurately displays all the complexities of the problem, or at least some of the more thought provoking ones.

» It is my dearest hope that words such as ‘Social Media’ and ‘Security’ have become a little more hollowed out from the meaning they seem to have once held. In some ways I hope it added meaning to the complexity of the problems concerning social networking .

» How does one make their way in the digital age? Those who do not blindly agree to ‘share’ what can become most valuable in one’s life; the right to privacy, but who also does not appear, to controllers of information, as someone trying to ‘hide’ something overtly and perhaps illegally. We can take a prophetic look into our soon-to-be Orwellian universe .

» Any systemic means of creating ‘privacy’ and trying to blind the eye-in-the sky or the stopping of mass collection of data will assuredly be monitored and easily identifiable by those who created the programs to provide such ‘security’. Those who are much more tech savvy than the average person, with a personal computer or cellular device, understands ways of getting around even the more advanced data protection programs and tool kits for a given device.

» In short, you can try to create obstacles ,for people seeing your information, but it is like putting a couple of drops of water on a ferocious fire.

» Explore the opportunities for protecting your data and you will find many different answers.

» Many people believe that they have some type of magical formula that can protect the spreading of one’s image and digital tattoo, but ask yourself what that really means to you.

» I am self-promoting a way of tackling this problem that many would suggest to be un-useful and simply too simple.

» I can only, in good conscience, suggest one thing when it comes to this age that we live in. An age that I believe is unlike any age before and yet presents all the same problems of yesteryears, but on a higher and faster pace and space.

» My life has been dedicated to studying philosophy and English. Many would deem it unnecessary to explain such a thing, however, my suggestions come from such a background and so it does not seem to me totally irrelevant.

» One can try encrypting all their files, one can believe that such monitoring is non-existent in the digital age, and one can go through every step to try to ensure their own security, but this is to fight a single battle in a war that is almost over and done with.

» One who has started to figure out fire protection plans after their house is already on fire seems to me to be a pretty poor solution to the problem at hand.

» Therefore ,what I suggest is a radical approach where one must get out of the burning building and start reconstructing a safer structure built upon the essence of fire protection.

» How is this to be done? One does not need to get off Facebook or stop Google searches, and one cannot bully major corporations into accepting some ethical premise over another in order to stop collecting data.

» Stopping the digital age is a fantasy dreamt by those who seek to escape from this world, and it is also misguided by thinking that there is something inherently wrong with the internet or social media.

» In my opinion , one should not start self-disciplining what one says, does, or is willing to share with others because they have been told to follow certain protocols. The internet can be used to engage and contact worldwide audiences to the marginalized problems of the few and the many.

» Blogging is perhaps the most crucial and unregulated means of communication that the world has access to. I encourage people to read blogs such as Riverbend’s . She writes a series of blogs, now published in a book called Baghdad Burning , which is a shining example of the power of social media to educate and promote her lived experience to others who would otherwise depend solely on major media networks to tell her story.

» I believe that the central question, or concern, that has been raised in academia about the right to be forgotten is only half the story.

» One needs to be remembered and listened to closely, like Riverbend, if one is to use the full power of the internet and display truly what is unique to that individual.

» Displaying one’s thoughtful examination of their own lived experience can take many forms that can be offered by the internet and social media.

» If one wants their privacy, the feeling of their lived experience being their own, one must secure it by writing and living carelessly- more on that next.

» Social media security can be secured by the publication of thought provoking literature and by the sharing of truly thought provoking ideas.

» Social media security should rest on a bedrock of the first amendment no matter the nationality, race, gender, or sex.

» Social media security is the process of making the problems of the people the problems of public policy and law.

» Social media security lies in the humanity of the people being able to speak, say, and express their lived experience.

» In the words William Carlos Williams “ Write carelessly”. This means to write like no one is watching. It also means that one should write with blood, as Frederich Nietzsche once testified. Live and write for all that you are and use ones public reason to publish anything and everything.

» What one does online is their business, however, monitoring one’s and others actions veraciously seems to me to be a step backwards in promoting an internet that has the right to free speech at its heart.

» Truly creative expression is the act of being able to look into the keyhole of the private mind and life of an individual. I believe that Social Media has failed to really get into the really private realm of anyone. However, if one shares these things and finds the capacity within themselves to write carelessly and write with blood then all medias should be free enough to allow such activity. Riverbend would not have had a voice, if not for Social Media sites, and what she said was creative expression. It was private, and it is foundational to understanding what social media can do to secure the rights of the people.

Make videos and produce social media that inspires others to see things in a different way; in short, create, create, create and share with the world. Quite like novel writing and essay scholarship modes of literature that express private thoughts and ideas at their highest value, social media can be used in similar fashions. You don’t even need letters after your name to be readable in these areas.If on the other hand one wants to post about their day, their lunch, their bathroom appointments, and their partying, then that is superficial information which adds no knowledge to anyone and therefore does not really penetrate the realm of any private experience. If one wants protection and security while posting these updates then simply do not post them.

You may ask; what about my images, my blogs, and my information that I feel belong to me- even if it doesn’t fit under the category of “creative expression’? What if what I have once said needs to be forgotten in order for myself or others to move on? Why can I not just have a step-by-step guide showing me how to protect and secure my information? How about other people using my image and slandering my name?

» Step-by-step guides to social media security only serve to become fodder for creating regulations and power structures that aim to control what can and cannot be done on the internet.

» It will control what people will and will not share and give the illusion that they are not in a burning building , but rather in the only safe spot in the house that will stand firm and protected. The right to search Facebook, Google, phones etc. has already been extended to authorities of our nation and I encourage people not to be fooled in limiting even further what can and cannot be done on the internet. The actions of others may harm someone if the person in question has posted things that they would rather have forgotten or that others have perverted for their own reasoning. To this I would have to say that; this effect has always been present since the beginning of writing and written literacy. Images always carry the danger of misrepresentation. I do believe that making a policy stating that someone can or cannot say something about someone would be to limit their first amendment right. If someone perverts an image or text to the point of a concrete damage to another then one can seek compensation in a court of law that addresses such claims, and I do believe that nothing should ever be removed for anything less. In my perspective, the best way people will achieve regulating their own freedom of speech will be by insisting on people managing their own content and have laws regulate what can and cannot be done on the internet. Regulating what can be said, who can post certain pictures, whether or not people feel too remembered or forgotten will only serve as barriers to what can and cannot be accomplished via Social Media.

» What is essential about a person can never really be grasped by photos and other media updates. If people really want to secure Social Media they should advocate for a free internet without regulation and monitoring.

» If one wants a step-by-step guide to ensuring protection of data, they will have to manage in the misty and confused political arena.

» The government, those who we elect as representatives for the people’s cause, have by and large weighed the value of individual privacy over national security and saw it to be worth nothing.

» The people will have to overturn major policy and law concerning the right to buy, sell, and store big data.

» New elections would have to be held that deem it unworthy to have the problems of a nation become more powerful than the problem of the individual. Perhaps too darkly, I believe that the war for privacy has long been over and the digital age made people give freely all the information that power will ever need to reconstitute itself.

» Perhaps whole ideological apparatuses will have to be put in question if people truly want social media to be secured and their image to be secured.

» Nothing less will ensure privacy gets a fair trial than the will of a people to de-regulate government and stop insisting on regulating themselves and others to follow laws and programs that have already separated itself a long time ago from the needs and cries of the people.

» For those who wish simply to understand what security may mean and what they can do about it individually, I promote the idea of writing and saying things on the internet or social media sites that truly are worth remembering and will inspire others to grow. To write carelessly and to write with blood, if one want to add to thinking in our time.

» Security , in my definition, is knowing that one has the ability to express their private concerns, ideas, and thoughts without threat of monitoring and censoring information. Social media can and has been an avenue to change the world and is perhaps, as of right now, one of the most far reaching and unadulterated ways of communicating the voice of the people today.

» Do not make unnecessary barriers for others to read what one freely gives out. If you want to be forgotten, write something that overshadows your past. Furthermore, if you want privacy to be an issue for policy and lawmakers, do not make it an added regulation for people who would use social media for the greater good of knowledge and freedom of speech.

» The war has almost been lost for those who want security from the securers and privacy to mean something in the future generations, but what is left needs to be protected. What is left? Private expression on social media and unregulated expression relative to what people want to ascribe to it today. Social media can become the tool of the future for recalling the voice of the people or it can become an extension of a government and regulated by people who are working against their better interest.

» Securing Social Media means making it as free as possible, radical politics and steadfastness to the right of free speech is the only way of ensuring security from those who have deemed themselves the securers of the nation.

» How do we secure social media? We start by making sure that what is written is always allowed a voice and that we can become thoughtful on what we can share not only in our countries, but across the world.

» Works Cited

» "Juan Enriquez: Your Online Life, Permanent as a Tattoo." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 24 June 2014.

» "Person of Interest - Intro Opening." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 24 June 2014.

» "Person of Interest Pictures - Bing Images." Person of Interest Pictures - Bing Images. Web. 24 June 2014.