Jonathan J. Ariel:

...You’re a prodigy: Or at the least, a prodigious writer of diverse articles on OLO. How do you find the time to read a book I must question? But the article misses the target of real concern to me. Breaches of online ID regards social media are easily avoided; don’t post!

...Where the real concern for our personal welfare must originate, is in the securing of our bank accounts and financial transactions by credit card from fraudulent attack by “hackers”. Forget the rest of it…that simply “pales into insignificance” as a comparison!

Sorry, got sidetracked at this line:

"While recognising how hi-tech giants like Facebook and Twitter manufacture products that prima facie enhance our lives..."

Enhance? The book's author may well have provided examples of how this has occurred, but interestingly, the article writer doesn't pass these on. Like many others, he simply takes at face value the fact that mass online communication - often described as "social media" - is somehow automatically a benefit.

It hasn't been around that long, yet already I see signs that it causes people to prefer the more impersonal relationships it creates. Facebook, for one, is little more than a running version of that ridiculous "Christmas email". Instead of receiving it once a year, and shrugging one's shoulders at its cheerful, studied impersonality, today we get a stream of equally trite "what I did today" banality. It enables people to retreat from any form of intimacy, by building a separate-from-their-real-self narrative, for consumption by their online "friends".

Twitter is even more impersonal, a bit like talking out loud on the bus, and then looking around to see if anyone noticed how clever you are being. That surely cannot be an example of technology enhancing our lives? Changing, yes. But enhancing...?

Now, where was I? Oh yes. Wondering why anyone who uses these forma of communication imagines for one second that they are doing so with any degree of privacy. Where have they been hiding for the past twenty years? Most people - myself included, of course - happily use our credit cards at the supermarket, knowing that all the stuff we put in our shopping basket has been captured on a database somewhere, and can be linked directly to us. Do we care? Not much. We are labelled and categorized by everything we access online - what books we read, what music we like, what web sites we visit. Do we care? Not much.

The only surprising aspect of this article is that the author clearly must believe that there are still people walking around who don't recognize this.

Can this really be true?

<<The best answer he can weave is that we should create multiple identities.>>

Surely zero identities is better!

Diver Dan – I agree that amongst the many issues we should concern ourselves with, securing our financial data is the most crucial worry we should have when using the internet.

Pericles – many indeed are unaware of what sort of data is captured when running applications such as Facebook on our macs or personal computers. That said, many who are aware are unable to turn the data tap off lest they lose all access to many applications.

Your comparison to using credit cards at supermarkets is invalid. At a supermarket you are willingly handing over your preferred means of payment (a unique card number). Unless you are explicitly told that your name, number and goods purchased will be handed to another party, there is little chance of that happening.
I shop using a credit card buying all manner of goods and still have not received free samples or product literature relating specifically to the brands I buy.

Of course if a supermarket really wants to know more about me or you then our arms may be twisted or palms greased by way of incentives to join their rewards schemes. By joining such a program, we are explicitly allowing the supermarket or its agents to track our shopping and communicate with us when they choose (to flog us almost anything).

Yuyutsu – in the ideal world I agree: zero (traceable) online identities would be the people’s choice, but without Commonwealth legislation I cannot see it coming anytime soon

Dear Jonathan,

<<Yuyutsu – in the ideal world I agree: zero (traceable) online identities would be the people’s choice, but without Commonwealth legislation I cannot see it coming anytime soon>>

Why would you need legislation for that? Simply don't visit any of those sites and have zero (traceable+untraceable) identities!

Even the one physical identity that we usually hold in "real-life" is one too many (but getting rid of it is a lifetime project).

Surely, that is illegal?

>>Pericles – many indeed are unaware of what sort of data is captured when running applications such as Facebook on our macs or personal computers.<<

As far as I am aware, privacy laws ensure that the site is obliged to explain exactly this. Of course, if people choose to ignore what they are told, they have only themselves to blame.

>>That said, many who are aware are unable to turn the data tap off lest they lose all access to many applications.<<

In which case, they have made an informed choice, to sacrifice their privacy in order to play Farmville, or whatever. More fool them.

You did not react to my initial point, on the manner in which social media are supposed to "enhance" our lives. "Enhancement" has a particular meaning - in this context, it cannot mean magnification, or an increase in intensity. So it must have a qualitative component, as in "an improvement that makes something more agreeable" (princeton.edu), or "an increase or improvement in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness" (Merriam-Webster).

Any thoughts? What area of our lives is "enhanced" by Facebook? Or Twitter?