BON BON: Can Privacy Survive in a Wired Society?

After an assignment that took the MC101s all through the Getty Center, some of us got together on the lawn above the Getty Gardens. Some brought lunch. Others just savored the moment.

There is no medianote today. MC101s showed up in massive numbers (nearly a hundred students and guests by my preliminary count) at the Getty Center this morning, followed by a smaller (but still respectable) turnout this afternoon at the Museum of Television & Radio.

So you get a bon bon. Today's online confection is from one of my students who brings his laptop to class. He came upon this Flash-animated call to action on the American Civil Liberties Union web site. It presents a scenario in which, not too many years from now, the communications technology that we have come to know and love has been used (or misused) to create a comprehensive electronic dossier on each of us. And government or the big credit reporting organizations or the big Internet companies (or somebody) has created an enormous national database that knows all about us. The result is funny, exasperating, and a little chilling.

I see the guarding of our privacy as a bipartisan issue. After all, you never know who will be in power 10 or 20 years from now.