I’m a bit bemused by the uproar over Prism and the NSA, etc. etc. From the moment I joined Genie, back in the dark ages of the internet, I never thought my information would be private. We are shouting into the ether, sending digital messages in electronic bottles that can be swept up by any passing ship.

Additionally, in a conversation with my friend, Sage Walker, she made the really brilliant observation that “privacy” was a concept that probably only existed for a brief period in the middle of the twentieth century. Before that there were party lines on phones, and operators put through calls and could listen in. You wrote a telegram and handed it to a Western union agent.

Letters were carried by couriers and any seal could be opened.

Go back a few more years and you have people living and dying in small communities, and never going farther afield then some five miles. Everybody knew everybody and certainly knew each other’s business — who was cheating on their spouse, who was pregnant, who’s cow kicked down the fence, etc. etc.

It’s only going to become easier and more common as computing power increases, and we live in an ever smaller world. We’re back to the village where we all know each other’s business, but the village has seven billion people in it. Until we escape the planet I think we better get used to it.