Semantic Werks

Continuing a (monthly?) post of important problems:

Anonymity and privacy: do most people understand these issues? And if so, how do they conceptualize them? For example, there is a theory in economics concerned with behaviour. It turns out most people have difficulty in thinking of money in abstract terms (even though a lot of economic theory is based on that very principle).

I postulate the same is true of privacy issues. I don’t think most people have a clear idea of what they mean when they say privacy. It’s something you know when it’s violated. An interesting area of research would be to investigate different reactions to privacy being violated or misused.

For example, a lot of people are concerned with medical information, chiefly in terms of being denied something as a result of a pre-existing condition, but I suspect few people appreciate just how open the current system is. The only security provided currently, apart from lock and key, seems to be obscurity and physical hardship. You can’t hack something if it takes too long to walk over to the physical file room. At the same time, most people just want medical care to be there for them. They favour access over things like safety and effectiveness — probably because you need the first thing to have the rest. So I suspect, couched in that type of enabling language, privacy issues in health could be addressed.