When I was working on my masters degree, during a time of considerable stress from intensive study, I experienced a powerful need to read something completely unrelated to my studies. I selected the sci-fi novel Earth, by David Brin. Among the novel’s several themes was a future world in which nearly everyone wore miniature multimedia recording devices that saved digital records of everything they witnessed from day to day. Recorded material uploaded automatically to a vast global network, where it could be reviewed by anyone else and was mined by numerous intelligent software applications serving concerns as diverse as news and entertainment media, corporations, and law enforcement agencies. Any incident—whether accidental or deliberate, innocent or criminal, intended to be known or kept secret—was highly likely to find its way to the publicly accessible network. Brin explored the social and psychological ramifications of a world in which nearly all human activity was open for observation by all others.

In 1999, Brin published The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom, a non-fiction book in which he delves more deeply into how emerging technologies may increasingly erode privacy while—he believes—possibly opening a new era of unprecedented freedoms. Brin cautiously suggests that it would be healthy for our species to loosen its obsession with privacy and embrace an existence in which all but our unexpressed thoughts are bared. If no individual or privileged group can secure for itself more privacy than the lowliest person, the playing field will be leveled, eventually freeing us to work together on matters of real significance, such as peace, universal wellbeing, and sustainable living.

Brin argues that omnipresent multimedia recording is on the near horizon and is inevitable. We should establish laws and new mores to ensure such technologies are applied equally to everyone, rather than just being used by power-holders against others. If the privacy of anyone is denied, everyone’s privacy must be sacrificed. Only this approach, Brin offers, may enable us to pass through the certain diminishing of privacy with civilization intact.

In a TechLearning blog entry, Vicky Davis writes, “We live in a society that is now replete with spying devices”. She discusses how students bring cell phones equipped with video cameras to schools, provoke incidents with other students and with faculty, record the incidents, and then post the videos on the web. Now we have—not the passive recording of unfolding events envisioned by Brin, but the introduction of recording technologies as tools of disruption and aggression.

In general, it is what we choose to do with technologies, not the technologies themselves, that shapes our experience of life. The same video cell phone one can use to spy on and antagonize another can be used to help ensure that public servants, such as law enforcement personnel, do not get away with abuses of power. Despite their potential to be used for good, ubiquitous recording technologies will continue to be used for mischief.

I find Brin’s vision of an open society inspiring, but I also realize that major social shifts tend to involve great conflict. Frequently, they have required the displacement or sacrifice of large numbers of people who will not, or cannot, make the transition. There is also the question of whether humans are possessed of an innate need for privacy and, if so, in what forms and to what extents. Perhaps we will not be able to handle the psychological traumas that an utterly naked existence will bring. Are we ready for our lives to become reality shows? Will we be able to tolerate knowing that our own eccentricities and unflattering moments are available for anyone to review? Will knowing that everyone is equally subject to exposure make us feel any less vulnerable or violated? I don’t know, but I suspect we may find out.