NUmber of words – 3,687<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy, as we understand it, is only about 150 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Humans do have an instinctual desire for privacy. However, for 3,000 years, cultures have nearly always prioritized convenience and wealth over privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section II will show how cutting edge health technology will force people to choose between an early, costly death and a world without any semblance of privacy. Given historical trends, the most likely outcome is that we will forgo privacy and return to our traditional, transparent existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section I:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How privacy was invented slowly over 3,000 years<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPrivacy may actually be an anomaly\u201d ~ Vinton Cerf, Co-creator of the military\u2019s early Internet prototype and Google executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Cerf suffered a torrent of criticism in the media for suggesting that privacy is unnatural. Though he was simply opining on what he believed was an under-the-radar gathering at the Federal Trade Commission in 2013, historically speaking, Cerf is right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy, as it is conventionally understood, is only about 150 years old. Most humans living throughout history had little concept of privacy in their tiny communities. Sex, breastfeeding, and bathing were shamelessly performed in front of friends and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lesson from 3,000 years of history is that privacy has almost always been a back-burner priority. Humans invariably choose money, prestige or convenience when it has conflicted with a desire for solitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This chapter takes a look at how technology shaped desires for privacy over the major epochs of human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBecause hunter-gatherer children sleep with their parents, either in the same bed or in the same hut, there is no privacy. Children see their parents having sex. In the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski was told that parents took no special precautions to prevent their children from watching them having sex: they just scolded the child and told it to cover its head with a mat\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
~ UCLA Anthropologist, Jared Diamond<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While extremely rare in tribal societies, privacy may, in fact, be instinctive. Evidence from tribal societies suggests that humans prefer to make love in solitude (In 9 of 12 societies where homes have separate bedrooms for parents, people prefer to have sex indoors. In those cultures without homes with separate rooms, sex is more often preferred outdoors).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, in practice, the need for survival often eclipses the desire for privacy. For instance, among the modern North American Utku\u2019s, a desire for solitude can seem profoundly rude:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The big question: if privacy isn\u2019t the norm, where did it start? Let\u2019s start from the first cities:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ancient Cities (6th Century B.C.\u200a\u2014\u200a4th Century AD)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like their tribal ancestors, the Greeks displayed some preference for privacy. And, unlike their primitive ancestors, the Greeks had the means to do something about it. University of Leicester\u2019 Samantha Burke found that the Greeks used their sophisticated understanding of geometry to create housing with the mathematically minimum exposure to public view while maximizing available light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Athenians penchant for solitude was not without its influential critics:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFor where men conceal their ways from one another in darkness rather than light, there no man will ever rightly gain either his due honour or office or the justice that is befitting\u201d ~ Socrates<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Athenian philosophy proved far more popular than their architecture. In Greece\u2019s far less egalitarian successor, Rome, the landed gentry built their homes with wide open gardens. Turning one\u2019s house into a public museum was an ostentatious display of wealth. Though, the rich seemed self-aware of their unfortunate trade-off:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGreat fortune has this characteristic, that it allows nothing to be concealed, nothing hidden; it opens up the homes of princes, and not only that but their bedrooms and intimate retreats, and it opens up and exposes to talk all the arcane secrets\u201d ~ Pliny the Elder, \u2018The Natural History\u2019, circa 77 A.D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The majority of Romans lived in crowded apartments, with walls thin enough to hear every noise. \u201cThink of Ancient Rome as a giant campground,\u201d writes Angela Alberto in A Day in the life of Ancient Rome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, thanks to the Rome\u2019s embrace of public sex, there was less of a motivation to make it taboo\u2014especially considering the benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early Christian saints pioneered the modern concept of privacy: seclusion. The Christian Bible popularized the idea that morality was not just the outcome of an evil deed, but the intent to cause harm; this novel coupling of intent and morality led the most devout followers (monks) to remove themselves from society and focus obsessively on battling their inner demons free from the distractions of civilization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJust as fish die if they stay too long out of water, so the monks who loiter outside their cells or pass their time with men of the world lose the intensity of inner peace. So like a fish going towards the sea, we must hurry to reach our cell, for fear that if we delay outside we will lost our interior watchfulness\u201d ~ St Antony of Egypt<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is rumored that on the island monastery of Nitria, a monk died and was found 4 days later. Monks meditated in isolation in stone cubicles, known as \u201cBeehive\u201d huts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even before the collapse of ancient Rome in 4th century A.D., humanity was mostly a rural species<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was no classical or medieval latin word equivalent to \u2018privacy\u2019. privatio meant \u2018a taking away\u2019\u201d ~ Georges Duby, author, \u2018A History Of Private Life: Revelations of the Medieval World\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Late Medieval\/Early Renaissance (1300\u20131600)\u200a\u2014\u200aThe Foundation Of Privacy Is Built<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1215, the influential Fourth Council Of Lateran (the \u201cGreat Council\u201d) declared that confessions should be mandatory for the masses. This mighty stroke of Catholic power instantly extended the concept of internal morality to much of Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe apparatus of moral governance was shifted inward, to a private space that no longer had anything to do with the community,\u201d explained religious author, Peter Loy. Solitude had a powerful ally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately for the church, some new technology would make quiet contemplation much less expensive: Guttenberg\u2019s printing press<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thanks to the printing presses invention after the Great Counsel\u2019s decree, personal reading supercharged European individualism. Poets, artists, and theologians were encouraged in their pursuits of \u201cabandoning the world in order to turn one\u2019s heart with greater intensity toward God,\u201d so recommended the influential canon of The Brethren of the Common Life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be sure, up until the 18th century, public readings were still commonplace, a tradition that extended until universal book ownership. Quiet study was an elite luxury for many centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Architecture of privacy<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Individual beds are a modern invention. As one of the most expensive items in the home, a single large bed became a place for social gatherings, where guests were invited to sleep with the entire family and some servants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, the uncleanness of urbanized life quickly caught up with the Europeans, when infectious diseases wiped out large swaths of newly crowded cities. The Black Death, alone, killed over 100 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This profoundly changed hygiene attitudes, especially in hospitals, where it was once common for patients to sleep as close together as houseguests were accustomed to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLittle children, both girls and boys, together in dangerous beds, upon which other patients died of contagious diseases, because there is no order and no private bed for the children, [who must] sleep six, eight, nine, ten, and twelve to a bed, at both head and foot\u201d ~notes of a nurse (circa 1500), lamenting the lack of modern medical procedures<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though, just because individual beds in hospitals were coming into vogue, it did not mean that sex was any more private. Witnessing the consummation of marriage was common for both spiritual and logistical reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Few people demanded privacy while they slept because even separate beds wouldn\u2019t have afforded them the luxury. Most homes only had one room. Architectural historians trace the origins of internal walls to the more basic human desire to be warm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFirstly, I propose that there be a room common to all in the middle, and at its centre there shall be a fire, so that many more people can get round it and everyone can see the others faces when engaging in their amusements and storytelling\u201d\u200a\u2014\u200a15th century Italian Architect, Sebastian Serlio<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To disperse heat more efficiently without choking houseguests to death, fire-resistant chimney-like structures were built around central fire pits to reroute smoke outside. Below is an image of a \u201ctransitional\u201d house during the 16th century period when back-to-back fireplaces broke up the traditional open hall architecture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first recorded daily diary was composed by Lady Margaret Hoby, who lived just passed the 16th century. On February 4th, 1600, she writes that she retired \u201cto my Closit, wher I praid and Writt some thinge for mine owne priuat Conscience\u2019s\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the renaissance, it was quite common for at least the wealthy to shelter themselves away in the home. Yet, even for those who could afford separate spaces, it was more logistically convenient to live in close quarters with servants and family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Law<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was just prior to the industrial revolution that citizens, for the first time, demanded that the law begin to keep pace with the evolving need for secret activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this early handwritten note on August 20th, 1770, revolutionist and future President of the United States, John Adams, voiced his support for the concept of privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am under no moral or other Obligation\u2026to publish to the World how much my Expences or my Incomes amount to yearly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite some high-profile opposition, the first American Census was posted publicly, for logistics reasons, more than anything else. Transparency was the best way to ensure every citizen could inspect it for accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy-conscious citizen did find more traction with what would become perhaps America\u2019s first privacy law, the 1710 Post Office Act, which banned sorting through the mail by postal employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fact did not stop the mail\u2019s popularity<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the time the industrial revolution began serving up material wealth to the masses, officials began recognizing privacy as the default setting of human life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe material and moral well-being of workers depend, the health of the public, and the security of society depend on each family\u2019s living in a separate, healthy, and convenient home, which it may purchase\u201d ~ speaker at 1876 international hygiene congress in Brussels<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the poor, however, life was still very much on display. The famous 20th-century existentialist philosopher Jean Paul-Satre observed the poor streets of Naples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe ground floor of every building contains a host of tiny rooms that open directly onto the street and each of these tiny rooms contains a family\u2026they drag tables and chairs out into the street or leave them on the threshold, half outside, half inside\u2026outside is organically linked to inside\u2026yesterday i saw a mother and a father dining outdoors, while their baby slept in a crib next to the parents\u2019 bed and an older daughter did her homework at another table by the light of a kerosene lantern\u2026if a woman falls ill and stays in bed all day, it\u2019s open knowledge and everyone can see her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Insides of houses were no less cramped:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cRight To Privacy \u201c is born<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While architecture failed to keep up with society, it was during the Gilded Age that privacy was officially acknowledged as a political right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury.\u201d ~ \u201cThe Right To Privacy\u201d ~ December 15, 1890, Harvard Law Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interestingly enough, the right to privacy was justified on the very grounds for which it is now so popular: technology\u2019s encroachment on personal information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, the father of the right to privacy and future Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, was ahead of his time. His seminal article did not get much press\u2014and the press it did get wasn\u2019t all that glowing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The feelings of these thin-skinned Americans are doubtless at the bottom of an article in the December number of the Harvard Law Review, in which two members of the Boston bar have recorded the results of certain researches into the question whether Americans do not possess a common-law right of privacy which can be successfully defended in the courts. ~ Galveston Daily News on \u2018The Right To Privacy\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy had not helped America up to this point in history. Brazen invasions into the public\u2019s personal communications had been instrumental in winning the Civil War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a letter from the Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, requesting broad authority over telegraph lines; Lincoln simply scribbled on the back \u201cThe Secretary of War has my authority to exercise his discretion in the matter within mentioned. A. LINCOLN.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It wasn\u2019t until the industry provoked the ire of a different president that information privacy was codified into law. President Grover Cleveland had a wife who was easy on the eyes. And, easy access to her face made it ideal for commercial purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rampant use of President Grover Cleveland\u2019s wife, Frances, on product advertisements, eventually led to the one of the nation\u2019s first privacy laws. The New York legislature made it a penalty to use someone\u2019s unauthorized likeness for commercial purposes in 1903, for a fine of up to $1,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indeed, for most of the 19th century, privacy was practically upheld as a way of maintaining a man\u2019s ownership over his wife\u2019s public and private life\u200a\u2014\u200aincluding physical abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe will not inflict upon society the greater evil of raising the curtain upon domestic privacy, to punish the lesser evil of trifling violence\u201d~ 1868, State V. Rhodes, wherein the court decided the social costs of invading privacy was not greater than that of wife beating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Technology of Individualism<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first 150 years of American life saw an explosion of information technology, from the postcard to the telephone. As each new communication method gave a chance to peek at the private lives of strangers and neighbors, Americans often (reluctantly) chose whichever technology was either cheaper or more convenient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Privacy was a secondary concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere is a lady who conducts her entire correspondence through this channel. She reveals secrets supposed to be the most profound, relates misdemeanors and indiscretions with a reckless disregard of the consequences. Her confidence is unbounded in the integrity of postmen and bell-boys, while the latter may be seen any morning, sitting on the doorsteps of apartment houses, making merry over the post-card correspondence.\u201d ~ Editor, the Atlantic Monthly, on Americas of love of postcards, 1905<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even though postcards were far less private, they were convenient. More than 200,000 postcards were ordered in the first two hours they were offered in New York City, on May 15, 1873.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next big advance in information technology, the telephone, was a wild success in the early 20th century. However, individual telephone lines were prohibitively expensive; instead, neighbors shared one line, known as \u201cparty lines.\u201d Commercial ads urged neighbors to use the shared technology with \u201ccourtesy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, as this comic shows, it was common to eavesdrop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cParty lines could destroy relationships\u2026if you were dating someone on the party line and got a call from another girl, well, the jig was up. Five minutes after you hung up, everybody in the neighborhood\u200a\u2014\u200aincluding your girlfriend\u200a\u2014\u200aknew about the call. In fact, there were times when the girlfriend butted in and chewed both the caller and the callee out. Watch what you say.\u201d ~ Author, Donnie Johnson<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Where convenience and privacy found a happy co-existence, individualized gadgets flourished. Listening was not always an individual act. The sheer fact that audio was a form of broadcast made listening to conversations and music a social activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This all changed with the invention of the headphone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe triumph of headphones is that they create, in a public space, an oasis of privacy\u201d~ The Atlantic\u2019s libertarian columnist, Derek Thompson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By the 60’s, individualized phones, rooms, and homes became the norm. 100 years earlier, when Lincoln tapped all telegraph lines, few raised any questions. In the new century, invasive surveillance would bring down Lincoln\u2019s distant successor, even though his spying was far less pervasive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon entering office, the former Vice-President assured the American people that their privacy was safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs Vice President, I addressed myself to the individual rights of Americans in the area of privacy\u2026There will be no illegal tappings, eavesdropping, bugging, or break-ins in my administration. There will be hot pursuit of tough laws to prevent illegal invasions of privacy in both government and private activities.\u201d ~ Gerald Ford<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the early 2,000s, young consumers were willing to purchase a location tracking feature that was once the stuff of 1984 nightmares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The older generations\u2019 fear of transparency became a subject of mockery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy grandma always reminds me to turn my GPS off a few blocks before I get home \u201cso that the man giving me directions doesn\u2019t know where I live.\u201d ~ a letter to the editor of College Humor\u2019s \u201cParents Just Don\u2019t Understand\u201d series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Increased urban density and skyrocketing rents in the major cities has put pressure on communal living.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a shift in consciousness from hyper-individualistic to more cooperative spaces\u2026We have a vision to raise our families together.\u201d ~ Jordan Aleja Grader, San Francisco resident<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the more extreme ends, a new crop of so-called \u201clife bloggers\u201d publicize intimate details about their days:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the edges of transparency and pornography, anonymous exhibitionism finds a home on the web, at the wildly popular content aggregator, Reddit, in the aptly titled community \u201cGone Wild\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Section II: How privacy will again fade away<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For 3,000 years, most people have been perfectly willing to trade privacy for convenience, wealth or fame. It appears this is still true today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AT&T recently rolled out a discounted broadband internet service, where customers could pay a mere $30 more a month to not have their browsing behavior tracked online for ad targeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSince we began offering the service more than a year ago the vast majority have elected to opt-in to the ad-supported model.\u201d ~ AT&T spokeswoman Gretchen Schultz (personal communication)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Performance artist Risa Puno managed to get almost half the attendees at an Brooklyn arts festival to trade their private data (image, fingerprints, or social security number) for a delicious cinnamon cookie. Some even proudly tweeted it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tourists on Hollywood Blvd willing gave away their passwords to on live TV for a split-second of TV fame on Jimmy Kimmel Live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even for holdouts, the costs of privacy may be too great to bear. With the advance of cutting-edge health technologies, withholding sensitive data may mean a painful, early death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For instance, researchers have already discovered that if patients of the deadly Vioxx drug had shared their health information publicly, statisticians could have detected the side effects earlier enough to save 25,000 lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a result, Google\u2019s Larry Page has embarked on a project to get more users to share their private health information with the academic research community. While Page told a crowd at the TED conference in 2013 that he believe such information can remain anonymous, statisticians are doubtful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have been pretending that by removing enough information from databases that we can make people anonymous. We have been promising privacy, and this paper demonstrates that for a certain percent of a population, those promises are empty,\u201d ~ John Wilbanks of Sage Bionetworks, on a new academic paper that identified anonymous donors to a genetics database, based on public information<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking as a statistician, it is quite easy to identify people in anonymous datasets. There are only so many 5’4″ jews living in San Francisco with chronic back pain. Every bit of information we reveal about ourselves will be one more disease that we can track, and another life saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I want to know whether I will suffer a heart attack, I will have to release my data for public research. In the end, privacy will be an early death sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Already, health insurers are beginning to offer discounts for people who wear health trackers and let others analyze their personal movements. Many, if not most, consumers in the next generation will choose cash and a longer life in exchange for publicizing their most intimate details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What can we tell with basic health information, such as calories burned throughout the day? Pretty much everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With a rudimentary step and calorie counter, I was able to distinguish whether I was having sex or at the gym, since the minute-by-minute calorie burn profile of sex is quite distinct (the image below from my health tracker shows lots of energy expended at the beginning and end, with few steps taken. Few activities besides sex have this distinct shape)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My late-night horizontal romp, as measured by calories burned per minute<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More advanced health monitors used by insurers are coming, like embedded sensors in skin and clothes that detect stress and concentration. The markers of an early heart attack or dementia will be the same that correspond to an argument with a spouse or if an employee is dozing off at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No behavior will escape categorization\u2014which will give us unprecedented superpowers to extend healthy life. Opting out of this tracking\u2014if it is even possible\u2014will mean an early death and extremely pricey health insurance for many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If history is a guide, the costs and convenience of radical transparency will once again take us back to our roots as a species that could not even conceive of a world with privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard to know whether complete and utter transparency will realize a techno-utopia of a more honest and innovative future. But, given that privacy has only existed for a sliver of human history, it\u2019s disappearance is unlikely to doom mankind. Indeed, transparency is humanity\u2019s natural state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n