Technology doesn’t stalk people. People stalk people.
I’m all for technology. My work wouldn’t be possible without it. But in its increasing advances, and the limited actual tech knowledge needed to use it, technology is perhaps entering into a scary new world of abuse. Namely, the latest trend of ‘celebrity tracking’…which I prefer to call by it’s more appropriate name “creepy stalking.”
I tweeted about this story from Holland this morning, where a cell phone is used to eventually track down Brad Pitt*. Whose reaction is, well, what one would expect. Along the lines of, ’seriously…I can’t even hang at my friends’ pad without being treated like a monkey in a zoo?’ It’s exasperation more than anything.
As handsome and talented as Brad Pitt is, there is absolutely no reason to try to find out where he is. Or where anyone is, really. Unless they choose to tell you.
This brings up an entirely new category of ethics in communications. Historically, the main focus of ethical communications hinges upon transparency.
- State who you are and who you represent as a PR professional.
- Never making false claims. (aka. Don’t lie.)
- If you don’t know the answer, say so. Don’t make one up.
Technology initially made these basic ethical issues more pressing with the onset of blogs and other web channels that made more anonymity possible and thus made breaking those ethical boundaries more possible without “getting caught.”
But the essentials of transparency still hold. Even if that means including negative comments on your Facebook page or your blog. Whether you’re big like Honda. Or small, like me.
So whether it’s using company email to carry on an office romance or pretending to be someone your not in an online forum…eventually it all gets found out.
There’s still a certain accountability and measure of “peer policing” that takes place even with these tech advances because we know that even if we aren’t busted on-the-spot…we will get busted.
This “cell stalking,” however, doesn’t seem to have any of that in-born policing. Who’s to stop some Dutch talk show host from tracking down any number of celebrities? Who’s to stop an abusive husband from tracking down his wife? Who’s to stop a government from tracking down, well, you? It all happens so quickly that it’s almost impossible to mark when one infraction in transparency begins and another ends.
And as communications professionals, how do we manage the potential abuse of technology as it infiltrates both large and small corporate structures, with proprietary innovations at-risk, and reputations on the line? Is there such a thing as privacy anymore? Can we compartmentalize our lives to be in one instance “professional” and in another “private?” Or have the lines now blurred so much that we are expected to be all things at all times to all people?
I’m reminded of a non-scientific survey that was reported in a story on This American Life years ago where people were asked to choose between two super powers: Flight and Invisibility.
Strikingly, most people chose invisibility. Their gut may blurt out “flight” but by in large, we want to get away with stuff we know we shouldn’t. Sometimes the logic is as flippant as “why learn to fly if I can be invisible and hide on any plane?” But the inspiration remains a little scarier than that. We want to do what we can’t do when people are watching.
I still believe our society is innately imbued with common sense and an ideal of decency that stems from The Golden Rule of “do unto others.” Our most basest instincts may be to try to get away with something, but we are still guided by a morality that is the essential fabric of our civilization. Maybe less so in Holland. But nonetheless, I’m holding fast to it for as long as possible.
I’m curious what others think? Has technology enabled us to do the worst in us in anonymity? Have we gotten our wish? Are we virtually invisible? And how, as communications professionals, do we prepare our clients for this “new future” of tech abuse?
*Some have argued whether that is indeed Brad Pitt. Seems hardly the point. It’s the idea that we can even attempt such an exercise that is diabolical.
