From: tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)
Date: Thu, 28 Dec 1995 21:36:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Only accepting e-mail from known parties
Message-ID: <199512280241.VAA19432@pipe10.nyc.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


[Below is the original I failed to post to the group as a whole. Sorry
about the temporal confusion that produced.] 
 
On Dec 25, 1995 14:53:19, 'Adam Shostack <adam@lighthouse.homeport.org>'
wrote: 
 
 
>	The basic problem is that (personal) spam is a social, not a 
>technical problem.  If someone wants to annoy you via the internet, 
>they can do so.  You can raise the cost of their annoying you, but you 
>need to be careful not to make it difficult to talk to you. 
> 
 
I agree in many ways. On a personal level, I am far more interested in the
*social* are of this form of privacy. It is more a problem of the
data-hermit than privacy. And in a society increasingly generating
narcissistists, I see the problem getting worse. 
 
Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab can sing the praises of the personal
e-newspaper with personal filters to cut out everything uninteresting while
culling the world new feeds for desired information. 
 
I see this feeding into the narcissitism problem. E.G. 
 
Imagine two people who "feel" that members of the other gender are "only
interested in one thing." 
 
Each wakes up in the morning and looks at their personal e-paper. 
 
She reads nothing of particularly nasty rapes, serial rapists at large,
rapists who have been convicted, and rapists who an uncaring pro-male
system has let out to rape again (i.e. been found not guilty). 
 
He reads nothing of particularly nasty robberies of men by women, serial
robberies by prostitutes, female robbers who have been convicted, and
robbers who an uncaring pro-female system has let out to rob again. 
 
Both believe that their custom filtered feeds are the *real* events going
on in the world and are far more accurate than any non-customized news
feed. 
 
I hope nobody takes this as a generic attack on the privacy issues that the
list is devoted to. I am a great supporter of privacy and pro-privacy tek.
But I see myself as a realist on privacy issues, not as a privacy-utopian
or a privacy-dystopian. 
 
We live in a post-Faustian world. 
 
It is divided into two groups of people. First are those who understand the
post-Faustian character and devote themselves to getting used to it and
even having fun with the new opportunities while understanding that the new
world also generates new problems (like furthering data-narcicism). Second
are those classic-reactionary forces (from all parts of the political
spectrum) who whine about how the post-Faustian world is personally unfair
to them and how everybody in the world has a personal obligation to them to
move the world back to its pre-Faustian origins. 
 
--tallpaul 
 
PS to Tim May: I understand your posts on material that is off-topic. I
usually agree with your posts. But I see the issues I discussed above as
far more on topic (even if highly mediated) than, say, the ongoing
discourse on the differences between an Army Captain and a Navy Captain.