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ネット世界での公私の境界
2000年前後から働き始めた世代は、ブログ、YouTube、ソーシャル・ネットワーキングなど、ネット上で自らの個人情報を公開するメディアに親しみながら育ってきた。こうした環境の中、プライバシーという概念は、時代遅れとなってしまうのか。
Privacy on the Internet
As the saying goes, there's nothing certain but death and taxes. Recently, though, I've come to suspect there's a third item to be added to this list: the Facebook user who complains endlessly about Facebook. It's remarkable just how common they are, and how, with a cuckoo clock regularity, the inevitable anti-Facebook tirade begins. The simple question, "Then why don't you stop using it?" doesn't stop them; in fact, it usually has the opposite effect.
I don't have strong feelings about Facebook. No anger, irritation, frustration. No unspoken resentment that a 27-year-old highly intelligent Harvard dropout like Mark Zuckerberg now has an estimated personal wealth of $17.5 billion because of it. It's there, so I use it. But the complaints focused on Facebook are as various as its roughly 800 million members: anything from frustration at having to read the countless banal status updates of "friends" you barely know to claims that it demeans the notion of friendship.
Privacy, though, is the main source of anguish. This can be a simple matter of a photo or status update being seen by those who shouldn't have seen it. Thus, the employee who had called in sick only to have his Facebook photos of his trip to the Caribbean give away his true location to his employers.
Or it could be the more serious issue of the abuse of personal information. For instance, passing on personal information to third parties, such as advertisers. Facebook recently ran into trouble with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission -- as did Google and Twitter -- for sharing information that it had led users to believe was private. It has since apologized and fixed its privacy controls.
Still, I'm left with the thought that if you don't want intimate information to be shared online then why voluntarily post such information on a social networking site, of all places? The Internet wasn't created for privacy. So, isn't the best solution just to keep private information offline?
Perhaps this question reveals my age. The Internet has changed the very concept of privacy over the past two decades. For instance, someone in their 30s has a very different idea of privacy compared to someone in their teens. Millennials, after all, have been brought up with blogs, social networks, YouTube and the like. They've been conditioned to expect an audience for every bit of their lives they share online.
Some say this will lead to the concept of privacy becoming outdated, and that no one will see any difference between the public and the private. It's a terrifying thought, although I doubt it will ever reach that extreme. The boundaries between private and public may regularly be redrawn but those boundaries will always exist, and so long as Facebook and social networking sites remain, the debate will continue.
- As the saying goes
- ことわざにあるように
- certain
- 確実な
- endlessly
- 延々と
- with a cuckoo clock regularity
- 鳩時計のように繰り返し何度も
- inevitable
- お決まりの
- tirade
- 長ったらしい文句
- opposite effect
- 逆効果
- irritation
- いら立ち
- unspoken resentment
- 無言の恨み
- dropout
- 中途退学者
- estimated
- 推定された
- roughly
- およそ
- anything from 〜 to 〜
- 〜から〜までありとあらゆるもの
- banal
- 平凡な、つまらない
- status updates
- 投稿をはじめとする各ユーザーの配信情報のこと
- demeans
- 〜をおとしめる
- source
- 原因
- anguish
- 悩み
- had called in sick
- 病欠の電話を入れた
- give away 〜
- 〜を暴露する
- abuse
- 濫用
- passing on 〜 to 〜
- 〜を〜に渡すこと
- advertisers
- 広告主
- ran into trouble with 〜
- 〜ともめ事を起こした
- U.S. Federal Trade Commission
- 米連邦取引委員会
- fixed
- 〜を改善した
- (am) left with the thought that 〜
- 〜という考えが残る
- intimate
- 個人的な
- voluntarily
- 自ら進んで
- of all places
- よりによって
- reveals
- 〜をばらす
- Millennials
- ミレニアル世代の人々(→2000年前後に働き始めた世代のこと)
- (have) been conditioned to 〜
- 〜するように慣らされている
- outdated
- 時代遅れの
- no one will see any difference between 〜 and 〜
- 誰にも〜と〜の違いが分らなくなるだろう
- extreme
- 極端
- be redrawn
- 引き直される
- so long as 〜
- 〜する限り