It's all a matter what you consider "the world". If you were born into and died in a small group of people and had little to no interaction with outsiders, your "world" is that group. In that respect, anyone in the "world" can easily know just about anything about you just by asking, because there's almost always someone around you, and people like to share information (gossip).
> and the data are vastly more detailed
How so? Because they can determine everything down to what food I like and dislike? I know that about most my coworkers. I think you are treating information you leak through normal interaction with people differently than what is gathered about you online, when really they are no different.
> Impunity of the observer is far greater.
In the end it's all about enforcing compliance with some group norm and governmental dictate. That's no different in the small group either. The group is the government, and you can take measures to hide your behavior, which in both systems might actually draw attention to yourself, or you can attempt to fit within the group norms, whether that group is the literal or figurative world.
A sweet deal has existed for a couple millennia if you've been in a large enough group to benefit from anonymity and the increased privacy that imparts.
In the world you're talking of, the surveillance happened in person, within a village, with approximately one book per million inhabitants[1], with a typical travel and data transmission speed of roughly 3 mph, a peak of perhaps three times that, exceedingly low literacy (~5% in villages, perhaps 25% in towns[1]), and very low data transmission rates: verbal recitation. Though perhaps with a fairly fast interactive natural-language query system (e.g., interrogation).
It was possible to escape that domain by travel, either temporarily or permanently, as little as 10-20 miles might suffice.[2] As late as the 19th century in the United States, it was possible for a well-connected and politically connected man to lead a double life.[3]
As to the detail of the data, your question begs credulity in light of what I've stated above. The rates of data accumulation today simply surpass all of recorded history. Something like 90% of all recorded data come from within the past decade. As of 2007, 94% of all information were in digital form.[4]
You assert, without proof or evidence, that there is no difference between digital information stored across servers, and the disaggregated wetware knowledge of your immediate associates. I pose as counterexamples Uber's Greyball program, which in realtime tied multidimensional characteristics of a user's Uber account, available hardware information, and social networking profiles, amongst other signifiers, to determine who was or wasn't a possible government employee, and to literally change their perception of reality as a consequence.[5] Thirty years ago, your magazine subscriptions might have been shared amongst marketing organisations, sixty years ago, state intelligence services might have had access to them. Today, your Kindle reader tracks what passages you've read within books, and every website, and its third-party scripts and cookie shares, track precisely what you've read online.[6][7]
That is straight up the definition of "Orwellian"[8]
Size, scale, and rate, matter. As a noted expert in the field observed, "quantity has a quality all its own".[9] Even gradual changes lead to phase shifts past a transition point, some sudden, some not. A small group of observers -- the few hundred of a mediaeval village -- is well within the Dunbar's limits of our brains,[10] and is subject to direct observation to boot. It has little capacity to keep a permanent record of its information, or even, particularly, to correlate observations from different observers. It cannot spread that information throughout all of humanity (some seven billion three hundred million souls, presently), nor can it act from out of the blue based on that information. It is a petty oppression, not a grand one.
Today's digital information attacks are difficult, often impossible, to precisely attribute.[11] Those who build information systems do no, will not, and ultimately in all likelihood can not protect them from attacks or subversion.[12] Data is described, by seasoned experts in the field, as a toxic asset.[13] It persists, can be used for fraud, blackmail, character assassination, to micromanage individuals lives (a supreme denial of liberty), and more.
Your arguments, or should I say assertions, are supremely unconvincing.
________________________________
Notes:
1. Buringh, Eltjo; van Zanden, Jan Luiten: "Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries", The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 69, No. 2 (2009)
2. Though, yes, there were strong limitations on such travel, see the Vagrancy and Poor laws of England, as examples, which applied to labourers. Nonetheless, a skilled craftsman, scribe, or professional could and many did, travel throughout Europe, particularly when the political heat got too great at home.
3. Geologist Clarence King, whose professional colleagues had no knowledge of his marriage, and his black wife, who thought he was a Pullman Porter, comes to mind.
> It was possible to escape that domain by travel, either temporarily or permanently, as little as 10-20 miles might suffice.[2] As late as the 19th century in the United States, it was possible for a well-connected and politically connected man to lead a double life.[3]
Yes, but I would argue if you go farther back, to the era I'm talking about, there would rarely be any other group close enough to make this feasible. When it takes days to reach the next group of people, if you even know where they are, it's a bit harder to pull this off. At the same time, if you're traveling back and forth between locations commonly, I imagine others would too, and information would eventually get out.
I'm referring to pre-history, you keep bring up examples form a few hundred years ago. I would argue there' a fundamental difference in how societies functioned in pre-history, where we have tribal groups, and the historical record, which is largely after people have started congregating into larger societies. You are bounding your examples with "as late as the 19th century", when really that's the wrong end of the temporal spectrum to be talking about. That statement implies that it was always possible prior to that. Do you believe that it makes sense in the context I'm referring to?
> You assert, without proof or evidence, that there is no difference between digital information stored across servers, and the disaggregated wetware knowledge of your immediate associates. I pose as counterexamples Uber's Greyball program, which in realtime tied multidimensional characteristics of a user's Uber account, available hardware information, and social networking profiles, amongst other signifiers, to determine who was or wasn't a possible government employee, and to literally change their perception of reality as a consequence.
As opposed to me using my information about my coworkers habits, statements, attire, friends and living situation to determine whether they are Democrats or Republicans, or dog people or cat people? If they asked me a question I could misrepresent reality based on assumptions about them just as well. (also, let's not go overboard by stating they changed perceptions. I'm sure they ended up doing that in some cases, but they misrepresented reality, and only through the specific aspects of reality you asked them about).
> Thirty years ago, your magazine subscriptions might have been shared amongst marketing organisations, sixty years ago, state intelligence services might have had access to them.
And 5000 years ago, everyone you had contact with already knew that information.
> Today, your Kindle reader tracks what passages you've read within books, and every website, and its third-party scripts and cookie shares, track precisely what you've read online.
Sure, if you opt in to using a device that gathers all that information. If I decided to broadcast what passages and pages I found interesting to those around me while reading a paperback, they would know a lot about what I found interesting as well. I'm not sure any equivalent action in ancient history where the nature of collecting or utilizing some resource isn't fairly obvious to those around you (unless you choose to hide it, which you can also do today).
> Size, scale, and rate, matter.
Yes, but in this case they are all relative. I content they were for the most part absolute in ancient history for intents and purposes, and they are becoming absolute again.
As a thought experiment, let's assume we're 50 years in the future, and information awareness is absolute. Humans have started colonizing Mars, and there is thus a communication delay between 22 seconds and 3 minutes depending planetary location. Transmission channels will be somewhat limited. Will each know everything about a person on Mars? Will Mars know everything about a person on Earth? Now assume some sort of colony or station in the Alpha Centauri system, with a 4.3 light year delay. How much knowledge will be shared about individuals across what communication channels exist? I think this is in some small way emulating the separation we had in our early history, and in your local area, there will be full information gathering, but that information will not necessarily be shared remotely, as the value is too low compared to the cost.
There's what's known about you, and then there's who knows it. I simple think that in the ancient past what was known was close to everything (but there was less to know), and who knew it was everyone you knew about (for the most part). I think that's becoming true again. Scale and size do matter, I just think in both cases it's everyone and anything (for values of those that make sense).
Today's world can focus the energies of vastly more respurces, and people, than any one village or tribe. And no, fundamentally, scale is not relative. That's what scalee effects mean.
A member of Daesh, or the Russian dissident press, or Free Tibet activists, can find the resources of a nation-state or global alliance turned against the, without warning. Enemy counts are far greater. Attacks are at little or no risk.
Again: "Today the observer can be anywhere on Earth, and the data are vastly more detailed. Impunity of the observer is far greater."
I don't believe we're going to reach agreement, and we're both repeating our earlier points, which is my stop rule.
> I don't believe we're going to reach agreement, and we're both repeating our earlier points, which is my stop rule.
Fair enough, and I agree. So you don't go away empty handed, I'll note that some of your counter examples have merit and are illustrative of a valid counterargument, I just don't think they go var enough to explain away my point of view.
Also, thanks for the conversation. I've expressed this concept a few times before, but I believe this is the first substantive conversation it has generated, and it was useful in exploring it in more detail. I only wish I had more time to devote towards making my responses more coherent and substantive, but I've been pressed for time lately. (Which is not to imply that the only reason you weren't convinced is because I didn't try hard enough. I'm fully willing to concede I may be wrong.)
It's all a matter what you consider "the world". If you were born into and died in a small group of people and had little to no interaction with outsiders, your "world" is that group. In that respect, anyone in the "world" can easily know just about anything about you just by asking, because there's almost always someone around you, and people like to share information (gossip).
> and the data are vastly more detailed
How so? Because they can determine everything down to what food I like and dislike? I know that about most my coworkers. I think you are treating information you leak through normal interaction with people differently than what is gathered about you online, when really they are no different.
> Impunity of the observer is far greater.
In the end it's all about enforcing compliance with some group norm and governmental dictate. That's no different in the small group either. The group is the government, and you can take measures to hide your behavior, which in both systems might actually draw attention to yourself, or you can attempt to fit within the group norms, whether that group is the literal or figurative world.
A sweet deal has existed for a couple millennia if you've been in a large enough group to benefit from anonymity and the increased privacy that imparts.