Fascinating article! The distinction between social and institutional privacy is great.
I think there’s a problem with the introspective method of comparing the two. It seems that the sort of privacy you prefer is affected by the sort other people prefer. so, for example, if everyone read a hardcopy of Fifty Shades of Gray you might be more comfortable giving up the privacy of the e-reader. but if everyone reads it on the e-reader, and you’re reading a hardcopy, then it becomes far less socially acceptable and you become the only one admitting to reading it!
Similarly with asking a question. If everyone asks their friends, then everyone is revealing their ignorance. If everyone is looking up answers, you’re the only one revealing your ignorance.
So the amount of social privacy other people have affects the amount of social privacy you would want to have. I’m not sure if the same applies to institutional privacy, but if it’s a trade then the more people trade social for institutional privacy the more you’ll prefer to do so too.
The section on Secure Multi-Party Computation was also particularly interesting, and I’m off to learn more about it :)
Fascinating article! The distinction between social and institutional privacy is great.
I think there’s a problem with the introspective method of comparing the two. It seems that the sort of privacy you prefer is affected by the sort other people prefer. so, for example, if everyone read a hardcopy of Fifty Shades of Gray you might be more comfortable giving up the privacy of the e-reader. but if everyone reads it on the e-reader, and you’re reading a hardcopy, then it becomes far less socially acceptable and you become the only one admitting to reading it!
Similarly with asking a question. If everyone asks their friends, then everyone is revealing their ignorance. If everyone is looking up answers, you’re the only one revealing your ignorance.
So the amount of social privacy other people have affects the amount of social privacy you would want to have. I’m not sure if the same applies to institutional privacy, but if it’s a trade then the more people trade social for institutional privacy the more you’ll prefer to do so too.
The section on Secure Multi-Party Computation was also particularly interesting, and I’m off to learn more about it :)