In a few weekends, I'm on a panel called 'Imagining Privacy in SF Futures' for Capricon. So obviously...I'm thinking.
Of course, the answer changes depending on what type of SF future we're talking about, but I keep thinking about the surveillance capitalism we live under.
One of my coworkers, a guy who's smarter than me, says he uses Google to log into everything because if Google gets hacked, he's one data piece of millions. Whereas I have a series of three email address, all with different passwords, which I will never use for my password for 'fun' sites such as Tumblr or Wired. But then, does it matter? In the past twelve months, both Wired and Google have been hacked and account details leaked. What use to be scary is now common place and our data is just...all out there. Privacy is effectively dead, unless you make some real effort to keep it.
So I keep thinking of how privacy is achieved in this SF future and I've come up with three solutions: pay for it (services like DeleteMe), poison your data (like VPNs or putting in fake birthdays), or hide (limit your use of trackable places, like deleting TikTok or reading the print instead of the website full of tracking pixels).
There are levels of each, of course, but I'm vibing with this. Very eager to hear what my other panelists come up with.
This is why I honestly love Capricon, there's panels about fandoms, writing, science, and various social commentaries with or without a media lens. It makes my brain happy.
