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Cameron Bostic
Professor Ballentine
English 303
17 November 2015
Privacy and Hyper-Attention: A Harmful or Appropriate Reality?
We talked in great length this semester about how communication and technology are
changing across the world. Specifically, we addressed the themes of privacy and hyper-attention
in our previous reflections. In a sense, these two concepts form a somewhat symbiotic
relationship, especially in the technology of the modern era. With privacy, society is becoming
all the more under the scope of surveillance culture, and our data and personal information have
never been more susceptible to outside forces. Meanwhile, hyper-attention has exploded onto the
scene propelling and often threatening the once-respected notion of privacy. That is not to say
hyper-attention is inherently bad, but the hyper-interaction that is the Internet and media has
spurred the masses to adjust to the changing landscape. Therefore, it is in this immediacy and
closely connected world that hyper-attention and privacy form such a crucial pairing, and I hope
to explore and better understand why an increase in hyper-attentive ways is leading to a loss of
privacy and why that is not such a big deal.
“Why did I decide to write cyber thrillers? Because we’ve gone from the Cold War to the
Code War,” said Thomas Waite, a best selling author. There is little doubt that hackers are one of
the many realities—controversial at that—that fall under the umbrella of hyper-attention and
privacy. As the Internet has increased its presence so too has the need for individuals with hyperattentive skills—many of which are being called on to prevent hackers from performing that
notable work. In the past, espionage was a fairly regular practice by governments and
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corporations—albeit much differently than today. Now, instead of James Bond and secret agents,
espionage is taking place in cyberspace. These individuals have to move at a near constant pace,
processing information on the go in a quickly changing environment. We are living in a time
where a single individual can do more damage with a click of a mouse and a few strokes on the
keyboard than any lone man or woman in the field. Amitai Etzioni talks especially about
encryption technologies and how they challenge the reality of privacy in the 21st century in her
book, The Limits of Privacy (2008). Etzioni writes, “The explosive increase in electronic
communications and commerce since the inception of the Internet has led to a large and growing
market for encryption technologies” (Etzioni 75). Encryption is basically a complicated code that
protects the secrecy of the communications involved. So yes, there exists a potential harm with
the expansion of such practices as encryption. I will not deny that. However, you cannot expect a
reality of hyper-connectivity without the potential risk associated with putting yourself out there.
And who’s to say that the loss of privacy is necessarily a bad thing anyways? “But maybe
we’re losing some of our privacy because we don’t really want it,” writes Emily Frye in
Computerworld (29). Anyone who has lived in the middle of nowhere can tell you about the
abundance of privacy one might obtain by doing so. Tasks like gardening in your yard would
seem to be a private, dull affair out in the country. If that individual were to move into a densely
populated area, then obviously his or her gardening (i.e. privacy) will be under a much more
public eye. In metropolitan areas, individuals could be photographed or on camera at all times.
Nonetheless, there is a trade off by being better connected and surrounded by more people. One
could have better access to social events, hospitals, and other services. The same rings true as the
hyper-connection becomes even more intense across the globe. Why do we sign up for Facebook
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if not to better connect ourselves to others—to share things we might otherwise have kept
private?
Bob Sullivan, a technology correspondent for NBC News, wrote in 2006, “So privacy
does matter—at least sometimes. But it’s like health: When you have it, you don’t notice it. Only
when it’s gone do you wish you’d done more to protect it” (Sullivan). I agree wholeheartedly
with Sullivan’s statements. Individuals do not worry about privacy unless they have to. That is
not to say privacy is undesirable. To a certain extent, most—if not all—people require some
degree of privacy to be able to operate at their highest capability. However, where I take issue is
the inherent blame placed upon the hyper-attentive advances made in the digital realm of
communications. “One irony of the debate over privacy in cyberspace is that while people
involved in computerized monitoring are trying to depersonalize the process to personalize
virtual spaces, defenders of privacy are trying to personalize the process of computerized
monitoring to generate resent toward it,” writes Thomas A. Peters in Computerized Monitoring
and Online Privacy (Peters 152). It is a tale as old as time: something new comes along and
people initially fear and resent it.
Moreover, there is an abundant thirst for information in society today. People need things
now—whether that is status updates, news or just general information. In turn, this has paved the
way for hyper-attention to come to fruition. N. Katherine Hayles writes in How We Think:
Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, “Hyper-attention is useful for its flexibility in
switching between different information streams, its quick grasp of the gist of material, and its
ability to move rapidly among and between different kinds of texts” (Hayles 69). That speed is
playing a role in how privacy is managed today. Like I said prior, we want things now. People
are putting themselves out there to be viewed like never before. Instagram. Twitter. Blogs.
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Facebook. The list goes on and on. My point: the speed at which people want these things is
probably detrimental to privacy. They are willing to look past the obvious concerns that come
with less emphasis on careful selection (deep attention) to get what they want. Nonetheless, that
speed is still productive and worth the loss of privacy for our right to be hyper-connected with
the rest of the world. It is what we want, and I see no reason why any of that will change in the
coming years.
Speaking of worth the loss, there is something to be said about the loss of privacy in
relation to hyper-attentive abilities. First and foremost, social media is a business and service.
They provide an avenue in which you can post information and your thoughts for anyone in the
world to view and read. And since it is a business, there has to be something exchanged. A
transaction must be made in some capacity. So yes, I believe that it is fair trade—much like I
said in my previous privacy reflection—for companies to get some of our information if we are
going to use a mostly free service. For the most part, most people see no problem with this
practice. And it is this desire and rise of hyper-attention that allows us to look past the trade of
our privacy and information to get what we want: to communicate and connect with others.
In the end, I believe that I have explored the relationship between privacy and hyperattention in great detail. It is a closely synched bond that plays on one another at a somewhat
alarming and logical rate. I have talked about how technology is one of the key proponents of the
loss of our privacy, and I have discussed why the loss of that privacy is not something that
should be mourned but rather an acceptable trade and reality. I may have discussed that we are
living in a hyper-attentive time, but there is something to be said about the hypersensitive nature
of the culture today. People today feel that their privacy is at an all time low due to the
surveillance culture that exists in our country and worldwide, and they would absolutely be right.
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Their privacy is not what it used to be. Of course, people used to have no knowledge on what
was happening in almost every corner of the world, too. Events and news travels at light speed
compared to the year’s prior where letters and radio were the fastest means of communication.
The world is under a larger scope because the world is changing. Technology is increasing at an
alarming rate, people are processing information quicker than ever, and the planet is becoming
all the more small. So although privacy is technically decreasing, there is an overreaction when it
comes to the ramifications of the ordeal. There are always going to be bad people who abuse any
system—and that is the case with privacy. So rather than placing the blame on technology and a
rise in hyper-attentive cognitive abilities, place the blame where it should be: on the criminals
who commit these crimes. Moreover, people need to understand that not everyone is out to get
them in regards to their privacy, and I hope that my reflection has communicated that notion.
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Bibliography
Sullivan, Bob. "Privacy under Attack, but Does Anybody Care?" Msnbc.com. NBC News, 17
Oct. 2006. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.
Etzioni, Amitai. The Limits of Privacy. N.p.: Basic, 2008. Print.
Frye, Emily. "Paying with Personal Information-yours." Computerworld 22 Dec. 1997:
29. Google Books. Web. 6 Dec. 2015. <https://books.google.com/books?id=MkPx0RnXLQC&pg=PA32&dq=loss+of+privacy+isn%27t+bad&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahU
KEwi8xJua9rjJAhVBOz4KHaG7CS4Q6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=loss%20of%20priva
cy%20isn't%20bad&f=false>.
Peters, Thomas A. Computerized Monitoring and Online Privacy. N.p.: McFarland, 1999. Print.
Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis.
Chicago: U of Chicago, 2012. Print.