Martin Roth

Embracing Non-Privacy

I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine, Lisa Long. Don’t bother looking for her, she doesn’t exist on the internet. Lisa works in enterprise software, providing professional support and operations. She makes a point to not post publicly about anything, lest her professional image be tarnished. What different industries we work in! I post publicly about almost anything. On Twitter I post links of professional interest and retweet stupid jokes, on my blog I will brain dump anything from bad movies to the RjDj vision. And this is open for anyone to see and read. On one hand I see this as a good thing, and on the other hand I don’t care.

Lisa disagrees with me. In her line of work she will be judged by her conservative clients based on what they find out about her online. Regardless of who she is and whom her clients will end up working with, the first impression will be her online record.

But I claim, there is no privacy on the internet. To begin, just try reading the Risks to Internet Privacy section of Wikipedia’s article on internet privacy. The best strategy is to use social media in order to control your image, because you will be found.

But that’s not say that privacy isn’t valuable. I once got sucked into a lengthy discussion about the Wikileaks affair, certainly the best entertainment of the last year. My foil was a policy analyst with some experience in high-level governmental discussions. The point was made that there are many situations in which secrecy or privacy is absolutely necessary so that parties can feel free to try out different solutions to their problems. If everything really were public or first sent through the media spin-machine, the negotiation process would in fact be much less efficient or effective, or at worst not even possible. Grudgingly, I was forced to concede the point and agree.

What’s my image then? (Un?)Fortunately I’ve always been a bad liar. So my image is more or less who I am. I’m a nerdy guy who likes to have a laugh. Deal with it. I take my work seriously, with a great deal of enthusiasm and passion, I have an ambition to break new ground, and I enjoy what life has to offer. Just like most other people in this world. I try to avoid compromising pictures of me on the internet. Not that they don’t exist. It’s ok. Everyone has been stupid and drunk in their lives, even “serious” people (wouldn’t you love to see some pictures from DSK’s sex parties, or Berlusconi’s bunga bunga parties?). In fact, personally I’m apt to trust someone who has such pictures available than someone who doesn’t. What is the latter hiding?

In this way I very much agree with Google’s old mantra that you can be serious even in a t-shirt. So let’s have that meeting in a coffee shop or a bar or on the street. Let’s be serious about our work. Then let’s have a laugh. Sod all of this social privacy rubbish.