Privacy No Problem for Digital Natives
According to Frieze magazine 75% of old or unused computers in America remain in the possession of their owners. They live out their days in cupboards, under stairs, in basements and garages.
I suspect the same is true in New Zealand. Do you have an old computer in your wardrobe? I do. And I have a shed full of them at my school.
Old computers are hard to throw away, not because they once cost a lot of money or that we shrink from adding to the trash mountain. We may tell ourselves we’re keeping the old computer to give to daughter or son when they leave home, but we know the last thing they want is a machine boasting Windows95 and possessing the memory capacity of a goldfish.
No, we hang onto our old computers because of the ghosts in the machine; the files that, like the adolescent tattoo or the packet of poems to a long lost lover, would make us squirm with embarrassment if they were revealed. In the wrong hands those files could frame us, defame us or publicly shame us. They could be used to steal our identities, strip our bank accounts, force us from our jobs and destroy our good standing in the community.
Sure, we could crank up that old machine and erase the files from the hard drive, but CSI has taught us that a shadow, an imprint, is always left behind and can be smoothly retrieved by a 12 year old hacker.
One thing I am sure of: the old computers of America and New Zealand do not belong to anybody under 30. They are the property of ‘digital immigrants’ like you and me, the generation for whom ICT was the unexpected complication on our journey, the mob of sheep that blundered into our headlights which we are wildly swerving to avoid.
Like a person who learns a second language late in life, our generation may acquire fluency with computers but very few of us ever gain the deep intuitive understanding that enables us to master the technology. I would never fiddle with the settings on my computer or cellphone as I see my daughters doing for fear that I’d become wedged in some tiny, dark corner of cyberspace and be forever lost.
Our children, the ‘digital natives’ who wear computer technology as comfortably as our grandmothers wore fur coats, have not only mastered this new language, they have also acquired distinctly different views about privacy. They seem delighted to display themselves and their lives in full view of the techno-public.
I was made aware of this by two recent experiences. The first was at the function Sylvia and I hosted for our daughter and her friends prior to the Ashburton College ball. We were struck by their eagerness to have themselves photographed. When I was 18 a photograph was something we shrank from. Photographs could embarrass and incriminate. They could pop up at your 21st and totally spoil the party or, at the very least, land you in trouble with your current partner.
Our children have shrugged off this restraint. They love being photographed and use all the resources at their command to publish their images: attaching them to emails, flicking them to friends via cellphone and posting them on the web.
The second experience was a job application. A teacher applied by email for a position at my school. Along with her CV and application form she encouraged me to visit her website, lodged on MySpace. MySpace is one of several interactive web-based platforms for capturing friendships. They enable users to talk, trade gossip, share stories and photographs.
My reaction to this young woman’s website was pure digital immigrant. I was embarrassed by her personal diary, by the photos of people with their heads down toilets, by her frank revelations of dreams and desires. I was intrigued to read her correspondence with the principal of another school to which she was also applying for a job. It was, simply, too much information.
I suppose the willingness of digital natives to live their lives in public springs not simply from the enabling technology. It arises from the ‘bare it all’ mentality of reality television and coffee table magazines.
But it puzzles me. Do the people who publish the intimacies of their lives on MySpace or Bebo really understand that the information is therefore in the public domain, accessible by anybody who cares to look? Or do they see it as a private transaction between themselves and whoever logs on?
To a digital immigrant it seems fraught with peril. You’ll never catch me revealing myself so publicly.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Me and Tommy’s One-Night Stand
From where I stand the Celtic Rugby Clubrooms look like they are on fire. Thin grey smoke streams from under eaves and through a solitary vent in the roof. Bright light flickers yellow and orange through streaming windows, and a loose window frame vibrates to a steady bass thump.
The Celtic Rugby Club is not on fire. This is the Ashburton College after ball party, and I am at the scene as one might be at the scene of a good-natured football riot. The centre of the event is a heaving, pulsing mass of human energy but here, just a few metres away, a sort of objective calm holds the bystanders.
Not that we’re gathering to seek autographs or admire the outfits. We are a safety net discreetly wrapped around the event; a cordon of parents, youth workers and security men whose job is to mop up the drunks, calm down the hot-heads and make sure everybody gets home safely at the end of the night.
There’s not much to do. The kids have arrived, divested of their ball gowns and tuxedos and hauling a small distillery of alcohol (cans only – no glass). They have produced their tickets and disappeared into the now-pulsating club rooms. An orange quarter-moon has set demurely over Allenton, leaving the stars in command of the sky and us below, stamping our feet and hunching deeper into our jackets. As the frost settles on the footy pitch and around my ankles I resign myself to a long, dark, cold and uneventful night.
Then I meet Tommy.
Tommy is one of three large Pacific Island men assigned to our small group to earn us a little respect from erstwhile gate-crashers. We stand together in darkness at the entrance to the car park.
I ask Tommy where he’s from.
“Wellington,” he replies.
I am taken aback by this answer. “No,” I want to say, “I mean, where are you from? Which sun-washed outpost of the tropical Pacific does your brown skin hark to?”
Tommy senses my query and guides me to safety. His parents came from the Cook Islands and he was born here, in Wellington. It is a simple whakapapa and a generous one, forgiving my small-town ignorance.
Nevertheless, I am startled by my presumption. Tommy, the child of immigrants, is as much a New Zealander as me, except his parents came from the Cook Islands, which makes him a Pacific Islander, whereas my parents came from Holland, which makes me a kiwi.
As the long night passes Tommy tells me his story. He came to Mid-Canterbury five years ago with the first group of meat workers brought here by WINZ and CMP. I remember their arrival – the sudden influx of street-wise Maori and PI kids into our schools.
“They brought us down for a week’s trial. We all stayed in the motels across the bridge and it went pretty well. I said to them, ‘can you promise me two things: a job as a slaughterman and a house?’ They reckoned they could, so I signed up there and then. My wife was up in Wellington. She said, ‘if you think it’s a good thing, we’ll come down’.”
Tommy never looked back. “We couldn’t believe it down here. There was so much work – we were never out of a job. In my first off-season I worked for a farmer at Dromore, on the lambing beat. I didn’t know anything about farming but he showed me how to mother an orphan onto the ewe. I told him, ‘all my working life I’ve been killing lambs and now I’m keeping them alive!’ ”
We pace in the darkness at the back of the clubrooms. I notice a small movement against the iron fence and call Tommy over. He shines his flashlight over the fence. “Come on out of there,” he says softly. A young couple emerge from the shadows and, under the beam of Tommy’s torch, walk guiltily to the front of the building. Tommy talks quietly to them for a moment before one of the youth workers escorts them away.
Tommy rejoins me in the darkness. “Thought they’d try to get in, I suppose. I hope someone gives them a lift home.”
Moving to Mid-Canterbury was a culture shock. “We were living in Methven and when we walked down the street people would say hello to us. We’d turn around to see who they were talking to, or we’d look at them to see if they were having us on. Where we come from you just don’t say hello on the street.”
“Now we’ve moved to Ashburton to be closer to the works. We’ve got a lady in the bank who’s helping us save a deposit for a house. She says ‘don’t buy anything until you can afford it.’ You know, up in Wellington nobody would ever think like that. None of us would think about buying a house. The PIs up there, we all spend the money. But it’s different here.”
“A lot of my family are down here now; my brother, and my uncle and others. We’ve got a culture group and COGs is helping us set up an incorporated society. We’ve got a church. When I go back to Wellington I tell them they should come and visit me at home. ‘But you are home’ they say. ‘No I’m not,’ I tell them, ‘my home’s in Ashburton’.”
A group of partygoers spills out of the clubrooms and is shepherded towards the courtesy vans. I ask Tommy if his teenage daughter is here. “No. She’d like to be but I don’t want her near the drink.”
We get busy as the party closes, the courtesy vans fill and we tidy up the strays. I move inside to help with the cleanup. As I leave I notice Tommy and one of his mates supporting the last young drunk of the evening. I pause to watch this large man, an immigrant to our community, gently lift the partygoer into a van and fasten his seatbelt.
From where I stand the Celtic Rugby Clubrooms look like they are on fire. Thin grey smoke streams from under eaves and through a solitary vent in the roof. Bright light flickers yellow and orange through streaming windows, and a loose window frame vibrates to a steady bass thump.
The Celtic Rugby Club is not on fire. This is the Ashburton College after ball party, and I am at the scene as one might be at the scene of a good-natured football riot. The centre of the event is a heaving, pulsing mass of human energy but here, just a few metres away, a sort of objective calm holds the bystanders.
Not that we’re gathering to seek autographs or admire the outfits. We are a safety net discreetly wrapped around the event; a cordon of parents, youth workers and security men whose job is to mop up the drunks, calm down the hot-heads and make sure everybody gets home safely at the end of the night.
There’s not much to do. The kids have arrived, divested of their ball gowns and tuxedos and hauling a small distillery of alcohol (cans only – no glass). They have produced their tickets and disappeared into the now-pulsating club rooms. An orange quarter-moon has set demurely over Allenton, leaving the stars in command of the sky and us below, stamping our feet and hunching deeper into our jackets. As the frost settles on the footy pitch and around my ankles I resign myself to a long, dark, cold and uneventful night.
Then I meet Tommy.
Tommy is one of three large Pacific Island men assigned to our small group to earn us a little respect from erstwhile gate-crashers. We stand together in darkness at the entrance to the car park.
I ask Tommy where he’s from.
“Wellington,” he replies.
I am taken aback by this answer. “No,” I want to say, “I mean, where are you from? Which sun-washed outpost of the tropical Pacific does your brown skin hark to?”
Tommy senses my query and guides me to safety. His parents came from the Cook Islands and he was born here, in Wellington. It is a simple whakapapa and a generous one, forgiving my small-town ignorance.
Nevertheless, I am startled by my presumption. Tommy, the child of immigrants, is as much a New Zealander as me, except his parents came from the Cook Islands, which makes him a Pacific Islander, whereas my parents came from Holland, which makes me a kiwi.
As the long night passes Tommy tells me his story. He came to Mid-Canterbury five years ago with the first group of meat workers brought here by WINZ and CMP. I remember their arrival – the sudden influx of street-wise Maori and PI kids into our schools.
“They brought us down for a week’s trial. We all stayed in the motels across the bridge and it went pretty well. I said to them, ‘can you promise me two things: a job as a slaughterman and a house?’ They reckoned they could, so I signed up there and then. My wife was up in Wellington. She said, ‘if you think it’s a good thing, we’ll come down’.”
Tommy never looked back. “We couldn’t believe it down here. There was so much work – we were never out of a job. In my first off-season I worked for a farmer at Dromore, on the lambing beat. I didn’t know anything about farming but he showed me how to mother an orphan onto the ewe. I told him, ‘all my working life I’ve been killing lambs and now I’m keeping them alive!’ ”
We pace in the darkness at the back of the clubrooms. I notice a small movement against the iron fence and call Tommy over. He shines his flashlight over the fence. “Come on out of there,” he says softly. A young couple emerge from the shadows and, under the beam of Tommy’s torch, walk guiltily to the front of the building. Tommy talks quietly to them for a moment before one of the youth workers escorts them away.
Tommy rejoins me in the darkness. “Thought they’d try to get in, I suppose. I hope someone gives them a lift home.”
Moving to Mid-Canterbury was a culture shock. “We were living in Methven and when we walked down the street people would say hello to us. We’d turn around to see who they were talking to, or we’d look at them to see if they were having us on. Where we come from you just don’t say hello on the street.”
“Now we’ve moved to Ashburton to be closer to the works. We’ve got a lady in the bank who’s helping us save a deposit for a house. She says ‘don’t buy anything until you can afford it.’ You know, up in Wellington nobody would ever think like that. None of us would think about buying a house. The PIs up there, we all spend the money. But it’s different here.”
“A lot of my family are down here now; my brother, and my uncle and others. We’ve got a culture group and COGs is helping us set up an incorporated society. We’ve got a church. When I go back to Wellington I tell them they should come and visit me at home. ‘But you are home’ they say. ‘No I’m not,’ I tell them, ‘my home’s in Ashburton’.”
A group of partygoers spills out of the clubrooms and is shepherded towards the courtesy vans. I ask Tommy if his teenage daughter is here. “No. She’d like to be but I don’t want her near the drink.”
We get busy as the party closes, the courtesy vans fill and we tidy up the strays. I move inside to help with the cleanup. As I leave I notice Tommy and one of his mates supporting the last young drunk of the evening. I pause to watch this large man, an immigrant to our community, gently lift the partygoer into a van and fasten his seatbelt.
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