When did we all become so private?

People are more scared than ever, aren’t they? Take today’s news for example that Google’s face recognition technology has sparked fears that it will aid stalkers. Or Switzerland whining about StreetView. Or Facebook employees getting fair up Mark Zuckerberg about his privacy settings. Why are we so scared all of a sudden?

When I was a teenager I begged my father for a computer. All the kids in my class had one, they were always going on about Netscape Navigator, Dogpile and Encarta as well as all those cool computer games. I was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica we’d bought from a door-to-door salesman and was still playing Alex the Kid on the Sega Master System.

But nothing would convince my father that computers and the internet was the future. He told me the internet was a fad and believe that movie with Sandra Bullock, The Net, as gospel (bad things happened in that movie). 

He believed that people could hack into computers and steal your money, that they could overhear your private conversations, read your mail and ruin your life with ill-credible sources of ‘information’.

Fast forward many years later and my father lives his life on the internet. Banking, bills, email, phone calls, news and TV. All of a sudden, he believes in the power of the password and the internet’s intention to actually make our lives easier.

These are fears that were expressed by many at the beginning of the millennium. We’ve come round to the idea that we can safely do our banking online, that we can book holidays online, buy anything we want with a credit card online, call people, send emails, etc.

So, in coming to grips with all that, do you think we will one day realise that the vast amount of the information and technologies around the internet aren’t actually out to get us?

Why have we become so private? The internet once made us extroverts, we became more vocal, we all got blogs and starting shouting our opinions but now we’re scared of who’ll see and hear what again. What’s happened that we’re now boycotting Facebook – the very tool that brought together 500 million people across the globe and put us back in touch with our friends?

It seems as if we’re all taking a giant leap backward. Shouldn’t we be embracing our open future?