You’ll have seen this word flying about recently and it’s time for some explanations.
Err… don’t you mean ‘publically’? ['publicly' if you're American]
No. Well, in some ways, yes, I do. Let me explain.
In the past, there has been an assumption that privacy was the default state of human existence. It was only when you, someone or something else acted on that state that your privacy was broken. You did something ‘in public’, ‘went public’ or ‘published’. But if that was ever really the case – I’d argue that it’s partly a symptom of late C20th urban living – then it most certainly not true at this point in the early 21st Century. There’s a database entry just a few seconds after your birth that stays attached to you for the rest of your life. Everyone has got information on you – lots of it – from the government to the police to the supermarkets you use. And they’ll probably lose it or allow it to be stolen at some point.
Things get even worse when it comes to the Internet: your ISP is monitoring your data stream; Facebook is keeping your teenage indiscretions alive forever; Google is retaining your search history. Our brave new world of mobile applications sometimes seems particularly geared to recording (and judging!) your location to within a few yards using GPS.
So one part of the meaning of publicy is this status of not having privacy, for which historically we haven’t had a single word, so strong is the assumption that privacy is the natural state of affairs.
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