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by yequalsx
4998 days ago
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We've always been social creatures and when we came out of the trees did we really have anonymity and privacy? Village life has been the norm for most of your history and I believe that anonymity and privacy aren't the norm in village life. Am I wrong? It seems to me that only since mass urbanization has there been anonymity and privacy and we begin to revert back to the historical mean. Although at a much grander scale. Is it the scale that is the danger? In the past one could leave the village for another location (in theory) and get away from stigma. Maybe now it is much harder. Of course now there is much more information and many more instances of instant fame. Perhaps the noise will be anonymize us except to the powers that be. |
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As far as I know, we come from clan-like nomads, varying between a alpha-male-harem model with young males on the outskirts and a pair-bonding model with young males striking out on their own. That means that those in your clan have generally had a very close and intimate view of your activities -- and you of theirs. But also that 1) clans were by necessity small, and 2) you always had the ability to walk away. Village life gets a little more complicated, but there is a span of control issue at work: you simply can only be concerned with so many things at the same time. People who are not physically near you have privacy from your oversight. In fact, much of human social behavior is about the trading of information about other people, their thoughts and behaviors. The trust engendered forms alliances and creates a communal atmosphere.
The state of nature is that I can choose to talk away from any group of humans. Once I am several hundred meters away, whatever I am doing is anonymous and private. I can choose to share something with one or a few special friends. I can choose not to share something with somebody who has offended me. And so on.
But now it's possible to be concerned with millions of things at the same time. Computers can watch millions very closely. You can't walk away from a group of humans and have privacy and anonymity. The system will track you. Your call phone, for instance, has capabilities that make it more or less something akin to a cross between a surveillance device and a wildlife tracking tag. The natural limits that draconian states have over their people are melting away. That's completely new.
So yes, we've always been social creatures, but society has been defined by the physical and natural limits on cognition and communication. What we're turning into is not just a more social version of man. It's something completely different. As the other commenter pointed out, it's really more savage than social.