Privacy makes you ‘You’

Of late, I could hear a lot about ‘Right to privacy’. 

What if we all are fighting those who’re stealing our privacy for years and this fight turns into a cold war which ceases to exist one fine day and that day is today? Or what if that privacy-stealing monster we think we’re fighting is just a shadow? What if I’m putting all my time into this for nothing? I mean, do you even care about privacy?

Ouch.

Do you even know what privacy is? You think you know that, but end up confusing privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy. Here’s where I thought that we should speak about this.

I was watching a period m0vie where a princess was writing a poem about her love. It was her secret love that was not returned. This sorrow was known only to her and that paper. She wanted it to stay the same way and lit that up in her fireplace. She was standing there watching the fire preying her memory, with tears rolling down her cheeks. It was a private moment for her and her pain. She suffered in silence.

We can’t suffer in silence anymore, because there is no silence at all. We can’t ignite our memory and make it disappear like a smoke, from the tentacles of the Internet that’s binding us all now. Our memory will be tagged with a price in a bullet-proof, weather-resistant warehouse somewhere on this God’s green Earth forever open to sale.

Don’t you miss secrets already? Was it not nice while they existed? Were you not contented when you were humans? Yes, only our unique thoughts that cast themselves as dreams and dance in your minds, giving you a nerve to transform them into actions and then stay with us and us alone forever as memories, make us humans. There are no humans anymore in mankind. You are all pile of wants, likes and fears, which will be valued only by other similar piles selling our fears and wants back to us. 

Woah!! What an enigma.

Since you aren’t a human, 

you lost the right to own anything. Humans used to own disks of their favourite music and movies once. You don’t own them anymore, thanks to services like Netflix, Prime video and Saavn. You don’t own the copies of even your own unique works, as you store them in the cloud. One day you will own nothing. It is like the air you breathe. You don’t own it right! You breathe out and I breathe in the same air molecules. You will live a life in the shared IP addresses. When you are not using your living room, it will be used by a third person singular for holding his remote business meeting. It might seem odd to you, but it’ll make perfect sense. Everything you considered a product once, will become a service. Walk towards that day right from today.

Since you aren’t a human,

you lost the right to talk about humans’ problems like climate change, corruption, unemployment, refugee crises and oil price hikes. Speech demands your thoughts, but we would’ve already known what you think, because you don’t have any privacy. So shut up, go clear your browser history and console yourself that you deleted your secrets. Yes, say to yourself that no one can see you when your eyes are closed.

You care little about trading your privacy for freedom. You compromise it for your convenience. ‘Why not get 10 shirts shipped to your door for you to try on and return the 9 you don’t like?’, says a blogger who amazes these conveniences. You’re delighted to see an e-commerce site’s suggestions, showing you the pair of shoes you’ve always wanted to buy. You’re held in awe when your social media shows feeds of your interest. AI and algorithms decide for you as they know you better than you do yourself. But you often forget that they sell ‘you’ to make money without even asking you. Yes, if they ask your blessing would you give that? Would you allow them? Many of you wont. They sit on your chests at nights when you are asleep, steal your breath and sell small jars of the same tomorrow to you when you’re awake.

A study says that around 4 million hours of videos are being uploaded into YouTube every day. Soon everything will be recorded and uploaded to the Internet. Services like autonomous vehicles will capture continuous, high definition, high frame rate, 360° video featuring you kissing your one-and-only at your secret rendezvous. You will literally always be on a camera. 

Eeeee.. Say Cheese!! It will be too late to search for blindspots then.