Momentous
why do we have "public lives" and "private lives?" is it something about the way society is constructed (normative, so we play by the rules) and/or is there something about the very nature of the human animal to always have some part of itself hidden (to escape control, avoid judgment, or to wield power, etc)? does anyone here live a completely "open" life and has no problem talking about any action? is this a cultural construct? what are is the role of privacy in sociality? also, what are the roles/functions of secrets?
Privacy is only a recent invention. For 200,000 years we lived in earshot of one another in tribal vilages. But with the invention of the printing press in 1440, the dream of univeral literacy was born and has only been realised recently in the West and developed countries.
And as you notice, we read a book alone, silently in private. In fact the carrels you find in your library are there to give us silence and privacy.
But the invention of the electric telegraph in 1840 put an end to all that.
For the electric telegraph led to the electric telephone, the electric radio, the electric television and the electric internet.
Ask not for whom the phone rings, it rings for thee.
And so the electric Typology tribe was born in the global village.
We are now all in electric earshot of one another just like a tribe in a village.
And privacy has come to an end. In fact the private bedroom has come to an end, as almost all of us here have the internet live in our 'private' bedrooms.
But of course we drive forward looking in the rear vision mirror at privacy, while the global village rushes towards us through the windscreen.
We can only see our private self through the rear vision mirror, but we can see the whole electronic tribe of Typology through the windscreen.
And if you haven't noticed, the windscreen is the screen in front of us at this very moment.
And it is momentous.