The “Generational Discourse” Discourse

Posting from the 8th International Computer Ethics / Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) conference in Corfu, Greece.

Today’s sessions have been an enlightening experience, particularly Fran Grodzinsky and Herman Tavani’s “Can the ‘Contextual Integrity’ model of privacy be applied to personal blogs in the blogosphere?” talk (which I had been looking forward to all week). While I took a lot away from the presentation and discussion, I left feeling a bit like a boxer thrown in the ring with one hand tied behind his back.

Underlying the entire talk (and explicitly driving a decent chunk of the discussion) was the loathsome “generational discourse” in its worst form: “Young people today don’t care about privacy.” Given the brief time allotted for discussion, I did not get a chance to engage the idea directly and was mostly reduced to venting my frustrations on Twitter. Now, however, I’d like to take a brief moment to push back with more than 140 characters. Consider this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance:”

Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

That being said, I – as a young person online – would like to speak directly to the established minds in the fields of computer and information ethics, in whose presence I have been much humbled this weekend:

Understand that this “generational discourse” is not ours – it is wholly yours. In that sense, there is no generational discourse. There is no discourse between the generations of digital immigrants and digital natives on issues of privacy and context online. It is nothing more than a one-sided belief circulated among older academics that undermines critical discussion of the changing relationship between all people (not just young people) and increasingly pervasive information technologies. Do not assume we don’t care. Do not assume, as Emerson put it, that we have no force. Bashful or bold, let’s kill this “generational discourse” and replace it with a genuine discourse between the generations – one that assures open and dynamic discussion of the value of privacy in today’s information society.