The rapid adoption of electronic surveillance methods has gotten quite a lot of coverage in the news lately.  At the same time people have realized that basically everything that they put online will be available there forever. Adding to that all the data from our cellphones, credit cards and other data sources that we might not even be aware of, it is no wonder privacy is one of the topics that pops up on a daily basis.

The alarmists are crying foul. They argue that our basic right to privacy is being severely compromised and that preventive measures should be taken to insure that our current walls of privacy will not be breached.

On the other hand people are voluntarily unveiling more and more private things in their blogs and via services like Flickr and YouTube. Jaiku, Twitter and the Facebook status update are taking this a step further. They allow you to tell your friends about your location and daily going-ons in minutiae detail.

I would argue that secretiveness is actually a by-product of industrialization and mass media. Our level of privacy was quite different when people were still living in smaller communities. Everybody knew the other members of the tribe and it was hard to keep secrets when news and rumors spread rapidly throughout the whole community.

Digital media is taking us back to a time before we put up our walls of privacy. The tribe will no longer be constrained to one physical location but when it comes to privacy they might as well be. Digital media will make it possible for every member of the tribe to know where everyone else is, what they are doing and what they are thinking about.

Having every detail of our lives plastered online for anyone to see will change the way we think about privacy. Being worried that your future boss can see all the stupid things that you did as a teenager will not be an issue anymore because you will be able to see exactly the same things about the boss. When everything is public there will no longer be a need for privacy.

I am hoping that more openness will force people and businesses to be more civil and think more about the consequences of their actions.