The “Good Play Project’s” commentary cites the four characteristics (mentioned in boyd’s article on social networking) of NDM that make privacy issues so challenging: persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audience.  The argument put forth is that online, especially among younger users on social networking sites, a new understanding of privacy is emerging, a “culture of disclosure,” in which “public is the new private” (20-1).  I believe that this progression in perception is likely to deepen in the future, as this demographic moves into adulthood and the world of employment.  Right now, one hears stories about people’s job prospects being damaged as potential employers do Google searches that turn up MySpace or Facebook pages with photos of the applicant at drunken parties or blog posts that blast the posters’ pet peeves with scatological delight or brag about sexual adventures.  The digitally accused may protest that these documents are part of their private lives and private opinions, but these private lives have become public, for anyone with an Internet connection and a search engine to view and judge.  And the ones doing that judging currently are mostly steeped in the pre-Internet social conventions of privacy.  How will things change as the generation that sees public as the new private holds the reins?

I see an analogy with the change that has gradually come about in the public perception of youthful experimentation with controlled substances by political figures (e.g., the president having smoked pot in college).  When Bill Clinton had to confront this issue, he was the first president from the post-WWII generation—the children of the Sixties who grew up in an era of such experimentation that went way beyond the social conventions of their parents.  Clinton had to equivocate about his marijuana experience (he didn’t inhale, he famously claimed), downplay it, and accept a certain amount of public shaming over the issue.  Since then, we have had a president who was a semi-admitted cocaine user (Bush), and now a president who openly acknowledges that he inhaled (Obama: “that was the point”).  In this last instance, the information caused barely a ripple in the public consciousness.  In part, I see the reason for that being that the generation for who such experimentation was almost an unavoidable part of growing up is now in power.  The accusations and the harsh judgments necessarily have to stop because everyone is vulnerable to them—hence no one is anymore.  If the culture of disclosure now developing as a nearly unavoidable part of growing up in the age of New Digital Media becomes the dominant mode of social being, everyone is vulnerable equally, therefore, no one is.  What was once a cause for adverse judgment becomes simply background clutter.

Of course, none of this invalidates current concerns about privacy online and the safety of unwary youngsters wandering about on the Wild West Internet alone.  They still need to know the dangers and do what they can to avoid being victimized.  But, just perhaps, the present state of alert may eventually be downgraded to something we can all live with in time, once we become accustomed to life on the frontier.