Private Lives: a thing of the past?

Thursday 19th June 2008 | 6pm | RSA, 8 John Adam Street, London WC2N 6EZ

In association with the RSA and the Reuters Institute

Listen to the debate

Read Iain Dale's blog entry

This lively and wide-ranging debate explored the recent remarkable change in behaviour and attitudes towards privacy. This shift has been attributed to a number of social and technological developments, such as the rise in new mobile technologies, self-publishing tools and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, all resulting in a cultural shift towards greater self revelation. 

The panel - ably interrogated by Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, Claire Fox, director of Institute of Ideas, Iain Dale, one of Britain's leading political commentators and Stephen Whittle, visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute - covered social networking, the line to be drawn between reporting and not reporting celebrity gossip, the management of an individual's digital identity, the role of parents in dealing with a Web 2.0 generation and the historical moment that we live in.

Dominic Campbell, the Director of collaborative management consultancy, FutureGov, told the audience about his declarative lifestyle: the sharing of every aspect of his life with the world via the web, and the blurring of the distinction between the public and the private, the personal and the political/professional. You can catch up with him here. Dominic also showed the audience this YouTube video, wondering what Facebook would look like if its rules applied in reality (some strong language).

Tom Ilube, the CEO of online identity experts Garlik, stunned the audience by demonstrating how much he had discovered on the internet about panellist Claire Fox. Having started with her Wikipedia entry and the Institute of Ideas website, he quickly progressed to her address, a picture of her house, and how much she had paid for it, and even her mother's maiden name. Tom stressed the need to manage your digital identity, and stressed that the technological explosion (one which was likely to see the online information about any one person double in 18 months) was not necessarily good or bad, merely different. He compared it to a change from ice to water - the same things in very different forms - and that having skated on ice, we must now adapt so we don't drown in water.

Dr Tanya Byron, child psychologist and author of the recent Byron Review for the Government (on the effects of the internet and video games on children), stressed that whereas parents are Web 1.0, searching the net and using email, children are now Web 2.0, joining social networking sites and uploading and creating their own content. It can be very difficult for parents to equip their children to remain safe online when they themselves have difficulty understanding the concept of Web 2.0. Dr Byron was very clear that words such as 'control' and 'regulate' were the wrong ones to use: parents should allow children their own space, merely equip them with the skills for playing in it. The growth of online social networking came from children fulfilling social needs, denied an expression in the real world through parental worries about safety; 'clamping down' on the internet may cause its own problems.

Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster and Director of the Orwell Prize, declared herself in favour of some opacity, as opposed to transparency: people should have the space in their private lives, and even in their public jobs, to test ideas and express opinions (in the tradition of J. S. Mill). Such privacy could actually protect and enlarge freedom, and allow progress. This freedom to make mistakes also extended to parents granting their children this freedom. Professor Seaton also felt there was a danger in not taking an historical look at change and changes in sensibility about technological progress. She also pointed out that while the amount of personal information had increased owing to technology, other areas of knowledge were suffering - according to surveys, for example, British people know less about India now than they did in the 1980s.

Camilla Wright, editor of Popbitch, explained how the popular celebrity blog had come into being, as a service designed to get behind the carefully managed images of celebrities. She suggested that the biggest change since it had started was the willingness of celebrities to expose themselves by selling wedding photos, relationship stories, and tales of mental and physical abuse to magazines. People who moved in the public domain and worked to expose themselves through the media were fair game: those who preferred to keep their private lives private - people who Camilla very deliberately distanced from the term 'celebrities' - were largely off-limits, as were stories about illness and other subject areas that were not funny. She felt that, whatever the underlying desire to publicise one's life, it was money which caused those desires to be realised.