Remember the Yellow Pages?
One of the things I like to study in life are cultural changes and markers, as they can often provide value to not only our personal lives, but what we do in business as well. Something I was recently thinking about was the topic of privacy.
Remember the yellow pages? I remember my mom telling me stories about when she was growing up, when they had something called “party lines” at their house. This meant that several houses shared the same phone line, so if you picked up and someone else was on, you would have to wait until they were finished. As time went on, most homes had their own line. Eventually our “communication boxes” started coming with us everywhere we travel.
One other thing that we may forget is that each year, a large book called a “phone book” would be delivered to our doors, and it would have the name, number and address of pretty much everyone around us - in addition to all the businesses. (By the way, mass deliveries ended around 15 years ago, but companies are still required to print them upon request).
Do you remember how much of a big deal it was when someone had an “unlisted” number? For the most part, you could pretty much find anyone you needed to. However, the interesting thing was, it didn’t seem like a privacy issue having access to people’s information; it seemed like it was an essential part of the community infrastructure.
Much of our world is now driven by technology and access to information, and we have shifted what we used to call privacy to a sort of security. We are now forced to think about privacy in a different way, because access to things well beyond our phone numbers are now becoming available through data breaches, marketing organizations, and other sources.
The reality of our world is that we are now forced to be hypervigilant regarding access to information about our lives and how we use it; and this includes some of the stuff we used to think was part of basic society. For example, how often do we find ourselves hesitant about giving out our phone number, or not selling something online because we don’t want people to know where we live? It just seems to be part of the deal now.
My question is; now what? Do we just assume that this trend of access to information is always going to be part of life, and that it will only become more important? Is there anything we can do to segregate back the difference between security and privacy, and treat them accordingly? And can we gain a return to the value of societal infrastructure used for the good, versus much of our lives now being “built” around information?
While we fully understand the importance of information privacy, as it is key to what we do in our work each day, I'm hoping there is also some room for cultural work we can do in this area as well. We are all connected. Seeing our friends, neighbors, and colleagues as “information” is something I hope our world could improve upon as we determine the line between technology and life, and what we want our future to look like.
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