COMMENT ON SARAH FORD'S ‘RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF PRIVACY AND PUBLICITY’

Abstract

Sarah Ford's recent article, ‘Reconceptualizing the Public/Private Distinction in the Age of Information Technology’ demonstrates how social media shifts our understanding of privacy and publicity and proposes a continuum model instead of a simple dichotomy. In this commentary, we argue that Ford's proposed model does not go far enough to break down the problematic dichotomous thinking and propose a further reconceptualization of privacy and publicity as a dialectic.

Keywords:

• sociology
• ICTs
• surveillance
• privacy
• publicity
• social change
• Web 2.0
• continuum
• dialectic
• theory

Notes

This insight is central to the Socratic method which brings wisdom by leading pupils to formulate questions that themselves are only the precondition to the next set of questions. In fact, the Oracle of Delphi was purported to have called Socrates, the wisest man in Athens, because he was the only person who knew what he did not know.