Syd’s Response Questions #2

  1. Under the section titled “Marketing still makes it harder to talk” point 61 “When personalizing something is creepy, it’s a pretty good indication that you don’t understand what it means to be a person” and 62 “Personal is human Personalized isn’t” seem to contradict each other completely. What the hell is going on here? So you aren’t human if you don’t understand personalizing something but personalized is not human? That makes no sense to me. Help.
  2. In the section titled “Privacy in the age of weasels” point 91 states that “We can only figure out what it means to be private once we figure out what it means to be social…” going onto 93 which states “Hackers got us into this and hackers will have to get us out.” Doc Searls and David Weinberg present themselves as knowing all about the internet but there take on privacy comes off as naive to me. Once you post something on the internet it is not private! The internet is the farthest thing from a private place! There’s a lot of finger pointing going on in this article, the bad qualities of the internet are being blamed on others. Do these guys not understand that the internet comes with issues that are beyond a certain group of people (in this case, hackers). Am I crazy? Maybe I’m misunderstanding? These guys seem quick to blame instead of considering that the internet, as a platform, has issues that can’t be pinned on people. It’s the internet, what do you expect?