I save personal email on my work computer, and I even left a bunch of my confessional writing on the hard drive of my beloved old Power Computing box that I recycled recently. But the fact is, I don't really have much to hide. And yet everyone wants to remind me that I'm rather freakish in my ease with openness and personal information-sharing. Not only do I allow people to peek at my email far too often, but I occasionally let fetching strangers peek into my heart, or borrow my books, or mess up the sheets on my bed without any promises that they'll be there to plump the pillows later. Our culture is going through a phase of privacy fetishism.
Privacy is all the rage in tech circles.
Nobody is completely sure. The generalized, free-floating angst seems to hover around a worry that we'll start electing bad presidents, eating unhealthy candy, watching fascistic movies and changing our minds in ways we would never want. Another concern is that bosses or political leaders could find out what you're doing on-line and use that information essentially to blackmail you, threaten you or punish you by taking away the things they know you love. Sure, we need to be wondering about this crap. First of all, if you're worried about targeted ads that will force you to consume out of control, get real.