In light of the privacy question what was going to be asked at the symposium , I started thinking a little bit more about the privacy that we have in our everyday lives.

Social media is ’embedded’ in my life and also the lives of most of my family. My eldest sister lives in England and her Facebook profile not only allows me to interact with her in an instant, but also have a visual image of where she lives, what she sees out her window and where she likes to go for a walk. All these things allow me to feel closer to her despite the actual distance.

My siblings and I look to Facebook as a way to keep in touch, something that we are all familiar and comfortable with. Our father on the other hand accepts that this is how we interact, however refuses to create a profile for himself. Every now and then he’ll pop on his glasses and we will show him some of the photos he’d be interested in on ‘the Facebooks’ (thanks for that one Dad), yet committing to a profile of his own is still out of his comfort zone. His view is that Facebook doesn’t allow him the privacy that he is comfortable with. I think there is some truth to this. Facebook users share a lot with a lot more than people did in my parents generation. I feel that at some point social media encouraged us to share things with others in order to create an instant relationship: Facebook “friends”.

Did we at some point stop valuing privacy? Is privacy a right? Or a privilege? Surely it is the former. I feel that I’m channeling 1984 here.