\o/

[wishfulaces]

I AM BACK ONLINE. At home, that is. After five hours of recovery CDs, downloading updates, and re-installing software. Brand shiny new hard drive, old casing and operating system. All my bookmarks are gone. It's surprisingly refreshing to be starting out new. I probably won't feel that way next week when attempting to hunt something down that I *

Comments

[wishfulaces]

yeah, buying the new hard drive made me go ahead & buy an external DVD burner as well. Double back-ups FTW!

I honestly *don't* know a whole lot about 18th century conceptions of privacy, just vague bits & pieces I remember reading in books/articles that were usually focusing on other topics. But there was a lot less, um, concern about privacy--everybody was always in everybody else's space. Families lived in smaller domiciles, people didn't move as much, etc. etc. etc. (And I suppose I should stipulate here families of higher standing, mostly in North America and England, since we still today have situations where 10 people may be living in one two-room apartment, and my knowledge base is best in those geographical regions.)

But this lack of concern over privacy seems to have started changing sometime in the 19th century, probably later, probably depends on location. And now here we are in an era of 21st century social networking online, and concerns about privacy are once again shifting, and it's an entirely different milieu because it *isn't* Aunt Mildred or the Johnsons next door or those sorts of closer ties.

Like I said, the thought sputtered out very quickly, and I'm sure much cleverer people than I have spouted about it much more eloquently. I think I'd like to find those spoutings, as it interests me.

[pontisbright]

Ooh, that is intriguing, def - and personal space (physical/emotional/both at once) is one of those things that is just fascinating to me. Eg the existence of 'the teenager' in 50s/60s coinciding with the notion of having your own bedroom (ish, very very ish, and I'm skewing middle-class Western world here but then that seems to be where the origin is? I lack absolutes - because maybe the having your own bedroom came first?) as opposed to a 'we all sleep in The Bed, where else would we go?' of, well, many many families much later than we think, I'd guess. (I am riding roughshod over geographical/temporal/socio-cultural boundaries here cos omg this could be quite a long comment. But, yknow, handwavery handwavey.)

And then there's stuff like the notion of a diary (I mean a personal, quite bitchy journal) still being something that your husband might read and indeed write comments on and read out loud to other people - so 'private' has always been confused. (I'm thinking of a specific early/mid C20th eg, but I know there are lots: same with letters.)

I suppose I can get my head around it when it's far away and I can sort of pretend a pre-humanist angle, but I do find it weird. Then again, I find it weird that I used to share a bedroom and a house with multiple people, and now I've become so accustomed to not doing that that I find people being in my space (or me being in theirs) really a bit terrifying. And then there's LJ and web 2.0 and it becoming less scary and more practical to have a 'real you' online presence.

None of that actually fits together, sorry. Do spout more though! And share links to other spoutings!