Privacy on the Internet

Hiking a forest trail around the hills of my home town I came across a little pool of water fed by a stream after going off the path and down some rocks and trees. I gazed at it, taking in the sight and also thinking how at this moment this place was deserted and I was there alone. The sky, the water, the trees, and me.

This feeling of solitude soaked in, easing a tension I did not know I had but now could feel receding. As I looked around I saw a large rock by the side of the pool with a red spray painted symbol the size of my palm. It was a navigation point for hikers.

Of course, the presence of this symbol was not too surprising since this area was not too far from town and there were well-trodden trails near by. However, the presence of this symbol jarred me out of that easy feeling. That symbol meant that this was not a place for long solitude. I got to snatched a breath of it then, like a rare scent.

Several years later, I got on the Internet at a time when people were still figuring out what the web meant, could do, and was for. It was also a time when there was not a strong current towards advertising; Google did not yet exist. Other search engines did exist, but more often than not we discovered content through word of mouth.

I got a web browser off a CD, explored websites from portal websites, and used lots of different programs to connect with people and access information. Back then, it did feel like a loose collection of networks---not necessarily aligned or even speaking the same language.

Surfing the 'net, also felt like that day at the pool off the trail. Yes, all of it was made by humans, for humans, but there was something else. I could have my solitude as I surfed, and from that a sense of agency. I was not a passenger on a ride whose path and destination were designed by some other hand.

Like I am today.

We know that these hands exist and---probably---will never now let go. The solitude is gone; I am observed, tracked, profiled, and analysed. Often, I am not interesting enough individually and am just part of a larger statistic, something that has value, for someone else.

I am not simply observed, I am also manipulated. The Internet feels more like an amusement park with rides, some popular with lines and some less so but all designed to spin you around for a while and make you forget your troubles and then deposit you at the gift shop or photo booth where you can get a souvenir of your time there. That is if you want to remember it.

Amid the flashing lights and cajoling noise, I miss that pool of solitude. Perhaps it could exist inside the park but it would be as a ride and that is not the same thing. It has to be outside the amusement part, beyond the reach of observation, of manipulation.

One way is to develop protocols that by design do not allow the machinery to erect an amusement park. Protocols like gopher, gemini (over which this post can also be read), and others allow this. While these relatively small webs are dwarfed by the Web, there are still those pools of solitude to be found here and I hope that, with time, there will be more still.

I long for a breath of that rare easy air.