George Orwell might have been optimistic, states one of the respondents to a survey of the future of privacy that found people are willing to give up more privacy to get more services.
Pew Research Center's newest survey polled 2,511 privacy advocates and technology experts on how they think privacy will be defined in 2025. The study's respondents were split on whether or not the world could establish commonly accepted infrastructure of privacy legislation, but most agree much of what is considered private today will be classified as public tomorrow.
Niels Ole Finnemann, director of NetLab, believes there will be a marked divide by 2025, separating those who value convenience and those who put a premium on privacy. NetLab is a research project to study Internet materials that is part of the Danish Digital Humanities Lab. It focues on humanities and social sciences research through digital sources and research data using software-supported analysis methods.
The divide between those who put a premium on convenience and those who cling to privacy won't be that marked, as the world's definition of public and private will look even more like a Venn diagram, according to a response from Homero Gil de Zuniga, director of the Digital Media Research Program at the University of Texas-Austin.
"By 2025, many of the issues, behaviors, and information we consider to be private today will not be so," stated Gil de Zuniga. "Information will be even more pervasive, even more liquid, and portable. The digital private sphere, as well as the digital public sphere, will most likely completely overlap."
It's the blurring of what's considered public and what's thought to be private that will change the world's definition of privacy and put those who seek it in the minority, according to several of the study's respondents. Living a public life, in which personal details are given to governments and corporations, will be the new norm by 2025, according to a common thread Pew Research found in its study.
The erosion of today's definition of privacy is being driven by the weathering of the public's valuation of privacy. Today, people are finding privacy less of a concern because they're enjoying the benefits of sharing with governments and corporations, according to Bob Briscoe, chief researcher in networking and infrastructure for British Telecom.
"Lack of concern about privacy stems from complacency because most people's life experiences teach them that revealing their private information allows commercial -- and public -- organisations to make their lives easier -- by targeting their needs -- whereas the detrimental cases tend to be very serious but relatively rare," stated Briscoe.
