Not being able to find private space in your multi-million dollar open floor plan modern home is one of those good kind of problems to have. If you want to live in a home with private space it isn't exactly hard to do. Since when did twitter prevent you from keeping a diary if you so choose?
I do agree with the author that private space is important though. It's nice have time to reflect without the worry of interruption or judgement. In these "Open offices" it can be an actual problem, I seem to be the only person I know who would be fine with just a cubicle.
I think the author means that tweeting keeps you from writing a diary in a way that it makes you feel that you already wrote about your happiness, problems, emotions, etc somewhere else.
In my opinion there is a misleading feeling of privacy in social media in general. If you post something online, by keeping it "private" you may be mislead to think that no one else is going to be able to read/see it at any point in time. There seems to be no space where you can currently be alone with yourself anymore.
I'm having trouble with understanding the confusion that leads to the idea of doing something private, "alone with yourself", on the Web. It's kind of like, pretty much opposite by definition?
I mean, being private on-line is like setting water on fire. Yes, you can do it, but you won't be able to unless you know some pretty specialized stuff, you'll most likely hurt yourself badly if you don't have the training, and there's zero point in lighting up a lake when going sailing on holiday!
If you want to be alone with yourself, use a text editor. A native application.
Sorry, when I mentioned "alone with yourself" I was referring as in general, not only on the Web. I agree with you that online and private don't mix. What I was trying to say is that it is like if you don't have your space anymore. Unless you turn off your WiFi, put away all your gadgets, there seems to be no space for your thoughts, for you to think by your own about your day-to-day problems and find some interesting conclusions and perhaps to establish a commitment on improving yourself. Wherever you go, sometimes even to the bathroom, people end up taking their phone. When alone in your bed, phone is again present. You're always being influenced by what you see, read and perhaps impulsively making decisions based on that without thinking by yourself first.
You're making a good point. I've noticed myself that the only moments I do real thinking nowadays are shower, bed (when trying to fall asleep) and the rare occasions when I don't feel like reading on public transport. Otherwise, there's always something else available that's easier and more comfortable than running with your own thoughts.
Was on bus yesterday for first time in close to decade, 65℅-70% of users where sat on their phones the entire way without ever looking up, it was actually quite fascinating to notice.
> Not being able to find private space in your multi-million dollar open floor plan modern home is one of those good kind of problems to have. If you want to live in a home with private space it isn't exactly hard to do. Since when did twitter prevent you from keeping a diary if you so choose?
I think that the article isn't saying we've lost the ability to choose privacy. It's saying that we've created a world where there's incentives to give up privacy, and very little consideration of what that choice means: sometimes we don't even comprehend that we're making that choice. Your own comment is an example:
> I do agree with the author that private space is important though. It's nice have time to reflect without the worry of interruption or judgement. In these "Open offices" it can be an actual problem, I seem to be the only person I know who would be fine with just a cubicle.
I don't see a cubicle as being private at all. It doesn't prevent people from interrupting or judging me, it only allows me a little respite from distraction, and even that it does poorly. Contrast this with the concept of a study, a room that houses rarely have any more, but in which much of the work of the world has been done.
Your very example of a "private" space demonstrates the ease with which one can give up privacy without even considering the choice.
Great article +1 to The Guardian which is becoming a favorite source of things to read.
Good point at the end about privacy not really being about hiding dark secrets. Privacy is a psychological benefit. I argue that privacy is a basic human right.
Re: writing diaries: I sort of do this, but in the cloud. I write a ton of stuff for just myself in the form of organized notes. For things that should not be public, like research on medical problems, I like to keep notes in SpiderOak (encrypted cloud storage). For other things that are for myself but not sensitive tools like OneNote and Keep are fine.
I don't think that's why people don't keep private diaries. I would rather guess that they have no interesting thoughts.
Technology actually made it easier to keep a diary that's truly private (I use a simple rar archive with a password). When I was a teenager without a PC, I had a paper diary, which always made me worry about my parents finding it.
Maybe it's also about difference of form? I can't for life keep writing a normal journal for more than a week, but I generate tons of notes about ideas, all in text files scattered around a synced folder. Is that "journaling" too?
I've found keeping a diary to be more difficult and more rewarding than it might popularly be thought to be. There are different approaches, from logs of events to records of thoughts/feelings, with varying levels of detail, and there are inspiring published diaries of all stripes to take as an example. I completely agree with the author about the latent connections between diarizing, privacy, self-awareness, awareness of one's public image, and the internet era. I think it'd be a great idea if diaries were a standard unit in secondary lit classwork.
I do agree with the author that private space is important though. It's nice have time to reflect without the worry of interruption or judgement. In these "Open offices" it can be an actual problem, I seem to be the only person I know who would be fine with just a cubicle.