Is Privacy a Concern in an Online World?

Privacy: the state of being free from intrusion or disturbance in one's private life or affairs. Most people would almost instinctively agree with this dictionary definition. However, in an online, always connected world, can we (or even should we) talk about privacy in any meaningful fashion?

Should we be worried about privacy in an online, always connected world? There is a large amount of concern nowadays regarding privacy issues mainly due to the increasing penetration of computers into our lives. Is this concern justified or is this a concern mainly felt by oldsters who do not "get" the wonderful new world of online connectivity?

Today the basic problem regarding privacy is that the technology that affects our privacy has advanced very rapidly and our laws and more importantly our attitudes have not kept pace. An older generation which grew up in a time when the information gathering capabilities of institutions and individuals was considerably circumscribed feel appalled at the sheer intrusive capabilities of modern technology. A younger generation which has grown up in tandem with this new developing technology is slowly starting to feel that there may be an issue with privacy and the technology that they now take for granted.

Whether this is actually an issue or not is determined by the extent to which we as individuals and as nations are willing to be accept intrusions into our daily lives. Since the birth of empires and states, there has been a tension between those who want to exercise control which involves reducing the amount of privacy and the rest of society which desires at the very least a minimum amount of privacy. In earlier times, the cost of gathering privacy reducing information was high enough to reduce the level of intrusion in most people's lives. This dynamic started to change with industrialization. One of the effects of industrialization was that it steadily reduced the cost of gathering, storing and sorting information about people. This was a major reason why Communism degenerated into a totalitarian society. In an earlier age, Communism simply could not have developed in the fashion it did; the technology of control was just not refined enough. The difference between today and twenty years ago is that the above-mentioned technology of control is now much more subtle than before. In the old Soviet state, control was not merely intrusive, it was obvious and obnoxious. This kind of control eventually engenders a reaction which is all the greater the longer it is imposed. This is why North Korea for example is actually a fragile state whereas Iran which has a less obvious control oriented regime is not to the same extent.

The internet has enabled a dramatic reduction in the cost of gathering and storing all sorts of information. At the same time, developments in hardware specially chip design and storage and developments in distributed computing coupled with high speed links within and between networks have

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Fear

We live in a world of fear. Fear, like anger, is a primal emotion. Like anger, fear short-circuits the rational mind. Fear often leads to actions and decisions that viewed objectively do not make sense. Fear also often results in such actions and decisions being perpetuated despite any evidence to the contrary.

Here is an interesting question and one that is linked to the topic of fear: why has the European Union (EU) not accepted Turkey's application for membership? This is a modern country with a strongly secular bias. It is a growing economy. Certainly the country is more advanced than many East European countries. Yet Poland was accepted and Turkey has not been. Why? Is it because the majority faith in Turkey is Muslim? Is there a visceral fear of the dreaded Turk storming the gates of Vienna? Objectively speaking, accepting Turkey makes a lot of sense for the EU. Turkey has a young, dynamic population. It is manifestly not interested in spreading Islam amongst non-muslims. Turks have not been participants in the global Jihadist movement. Turkey will inject much needed fresh blood into the EU. By its own estimates, European countries will very soon need to import thousands of workers every year in order to maintain their growth rates and living standards. This is a consequence of falling birthrates throughout the developed European economies. Where will these extra workers come from? Eastern Europe? Maybe in the short term but over the medium to long term, this source will dry up. The only alternative left are third world countries. Turkey is a logical choice. Yet there is strong opposition to the country joining the EU. What has caused this? It seems to be a fear of the other, the outsider. Again fear is causing people to react not only in an illogical manner but in one that is inimical to their medium to long term interests.

In other areas as well, fear makes people behave strangely. We have the rather strange phenomenon of majorities being afraid of minorities in a large number of countries. Sometimes this fear is economic. In many Asian countries, Chinese minorities enjoy a disproportionate share of the county's wealth thanks to their hard working ethos and strong family and community links. This economic success often breeds resentment and in times of trouble comes out in the form of pogroms against the minority as was seen during the fall of Suharto in Indonesia. Many other times, however, the majority fears the minority because of its religion. This is the case in India where many members of the Hindu majority seem to be afraid of the Muslim minority. It also seems to be the case in Pakistan where there is some fear of the Christian minority even though this is smaller than the Muslim minority in India. The fear that the majority feels for a particular minority sometimes results in (sometimes massive) violence against the latter. It frequently also results in an often unspoken, unacknowledged institutionalized discrimination. Again take the case of the Muslim minority in India. They represent perhaps 12% of the population. Yet their representation in various sectors of the economy ranges from 3-4% at best. Unsubstantiated anecdotal evidence suggests that amongst the general population there is a discrimination against Muslims in a community's daily life. Again fear seems to be a basic motivator.

This level of fear is by no means restricted to third world countries. Developed countries seem to have a particularly acute sense of this. The example of Turkey mentioned above is a case in point. Arizona, USA has passed a law that authorizes police to conduct spot checks on persons deemed to be possible illegal immigrants. Here there is a fear that the country or state is being swamped with illegal immigrants who are taking the jobs of local residents and who are responsible for criminal actions even though the evidence suggests otherwise. Indeed, the USA, the most powerful country in the world and one with the largest economy has been in a collective zone of fear since 9/11. It is because of this fear that ordinary citizens have allowed an extra-ordinary erosion of their civil liberties to take place; an erosion that is steadily continuing.

So fear means that we turn a blind eye to actions and events that in the long term are harmful to our personal and national interests. We are unable to perceive the danger we are in because our rational mind which would warn us is bypassed when we live in a state of fear over a period of time. The interesting aspect is that over time we come to accept living like this as the norm. It is only when we move out of the environment that we realize how warped our thinking and our personality had become due to fear.

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The Price of Technological Progress

When we think about the price of technological progress, we tend to think about its dark side. Nuclear fission can be used to generate electricity as well as bombs. Explosives can be used to destroy roads as well as build them. Computer networks bring people together and make larger, more collaborative works possible. They also enable new forms of criminal activities. Countless other examples can be given of how different technologies can be used for useful as well as harmful purposes.

This however is not the only price that we have paid for our rapid and rapidly continuing technological progress. We have paid the price in other forms that we are generally not even aware of. The quickening pace of technological advancement and the social changes that it has engendered has led to a general coarsening of our lives. In many aspects, our attitudes, the things we tend to take for granted and some of the things that we have lost would have horrified earlier generations.

Take the birth control pill for example. This has had positive benefits. Women have gained a greater control over the number and timing of their pregnancies. However, there has also been an unexpected effect; pregnancies out of wedlock are no longer considered shameful. This is an astonishing change that has occurred in the space of a single generation. Ofcourse a question arises: does it matter? I believe it does. I think that marriage brings a stability to society as a whole. Whether marriage is viewed as a sacred construct not to be tampered with under any circumstances or whether it is viewed as a contract that binds two people together and that should not be tampered with lightly does not really matter. A married individual assumes a burden of responsibility that he/she is not likely to disregard easily. It is much easier to walk away from a relationship when there is no marital contract. The result is that a large number of children grow up in one parent households. Research has shown that children growing up in such households are more likely to suffer from poverty than two parent households. The end result is that society as a whole suffers.

Such an effect however is an example that we can generally see and discuss and I will leave discussion of such broad changes till another post. Technological progress has resulted in other more subtle changes in our society and our thinking. These are changes that we are usually not even aware of. The worse thing is that if we do become aware of such changes, we tend to dismiss them as inconsequential but as I mentioned above, the cumulative effect of such changes is a general coarsening of our lives.

A good example of the subtle effects of technological progress is the art of writing. A positive benefit of technology has been that more is now being written on a wider variety of subjects than ever before. The problem is the very ease of writing. In the days when pen had to be physically put to paper, writers needed to structure their thoughts carefully in order to reduce the amount of editing later. This resulted on average in better prose (and perhaps even poetry). Today, the editing effort is relatively trivial thanks to computers and word processors. This convenience can (and sometimes does) result in intricately detailed and beautifully executed story-lines and writing. More often, it results in shoddy thinking resulting in shoddy writing. Most of what is written is thus essentially forgettable.

Another effect that technology has had on writing is that the pace of life has increased over time. Greater complexity in society and our economy comes at the cost of us having to devote increasingly greater amounts of time towards understanding and reacting to these forces. This means that we have less amount of time to devote to any particular task. This has had the effect that we now want our information in sound bites. The effect on writing is that the older style which required leisurely reading is now considered obsolete. Again the question arises: does it matter and again I will argue that it does. Sound bites have the unfortunate effect of reducing complex issues to simplistic slogans which not only do not inform, they actually do the opposite. While this would not matter in the case of fiction, it matters enormously for analyzing information. Why do people in the West largely fail to understand the roots of what they consider terrorism? Why are people not reacting to the financial collapse? Why are people not more alarmed about global warming? I believe this is because most people rely on sound bites that they get from TV and radio. This trend of using sound bites has steadily increased over time. An end result is twitter. Humans talk (and write). Birds twitter. People who twittered were previously considered to be brainless dullards. Even the dictionary meaning of twitter reflects this. Perhaps this is a sign of our times that twitter has become so popular. It is not as though writing a tweet is harmless. Despite what most people would think, going on twitter and writing a tweet can actually be dangerous. This is because twitter encourages writing and publishing spontaneously. As some people have discovered, this can cause job losses.

Related to the effect on writing is the effect on hand writing. People have lost the art of good hand writing and I include myself in this category. My parents generation was actually taught good hand writing. This focus was subsequently lost. Today with the ubiquitous use of computers and the spread of the net, people simply do not need to put pen to paper at all. As a result, the ability to write beautifully has largely disappeared. The most dramatic effect of this has been the loss of the art of calligraphy. This was a labor of love. Even today we admire good calligraphy. However, no one is willing to learn how to do this today. The master calligraphers of old are now in their twilight days. Their children are not willing to learn what was a family trade. Once these people go, the world will be a poorer place for this loss. While this is a subtle effect, its passing is nevertheless something to mourn about.

Then what about the art of conversation? The ability to carry an interesting and elegant conversation on a wide range of topics was considered the hallmark of a gentleman and a lady in virtually every culture in previous times. An educated person was someone who was widely read and frequently widely traveled. Today what is considered an educated person is essentially a technocrat. An insidious effect of this is that there has been a loss of grace. The ability to interact with each other and specially with strangers has degraded over time. What is considered civilized behavior today would to a large extent have been considered boorish in an earlier era.

Technology is wonderful. It has given us many benefits and have enriched our lives in many different ways. It is now difficult if not impossible to imagine life without electricity, running water, computers and the many activities made possible by them, automobiles, airplanes to give just a few examples. All these things have enriched us and opened up a range of possibilities that simply could not have existed before. Personally I would not want to turn the clock back. Yet there has been a price to pay for all these achievements. The tragedy is that as a civilization we are like junkies demanding our latest technological fix and not noticing the subtle loss of beauty and grace.

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Events That Changed The World: The Battle of Badr

A little known event in the outside world, the Battle of Badr holds a special significance for Muslims throughout the world. This was the first major battle between the (small) Muslim community and their numerically superior opponents. Literally this battle was a battle for survival not only for the Muslims as a community but for Islam as a religion. The Muslim forces were vastly outnumbered by a ratio of about three to one. Moreover, their opponents, the Quraish were better equipped. All in all, this was a battle that should have gone the other way and the Muslims should have lost. Their victory ensured that Madina - the hub of the burgeoning Muslim community would henceforth be taken seriously as an upcoming power in the Arabian peninsula. From this time onwards, the Muslims were not in a serious danger of being wiped out despite several major struggles within Arabia that still lay in the future.

Why was Badr such a game changer? There have been many battles between embattled communities and a superior foe. Most of them did not result in history changing events. If the outcome had gone in the other direction, in most cases the course of history would have remained unchanged and the world we find ourselves in today would be largely unaffected barring perhaps a few cosmetic changes. What was ultimately so different about Badr?

In a day and age which de-emphasizes religion, a large number of people do not realize the way religion affected our ancestor's thinking and way of life. To a degree, this is still reflected in the Islamic world but elsewhere and even in the Islamic world, religious and non-religious life are viewed as two largely distinct and separate spheres. Most people in Muslim countries today will say that Islam is a complete way of life but this is largely lip service. This was not so in the past when religion played and vital and dynamic role in daily life. Understanding this is the key to understanding why Badr was so important.

As stated above, Badr was the one battle threatened the new religion's survival. Once this challenge was successfully overcome, Islam gained adherents at a steadily increasing rate. By the time the Prophet died, virtually the whole Arabian peninsula had become Muslim. If nothing further had happened, then the subsequent history of the world would have been very different. To understand this, one has to understand not simply political history but also religious history.

Arabia is right next to the Mediterranean Sea. At the time of the Battle of Badr, this area was divided between the Roman and the Persian empires. These two opposing camps were equally matched and for some time now there had essentially been a standoff between them. On the religious front, there was a continuous and steady expansion of Christianity. Till that point, the Arabs had not made any mark on the world scene. So it is not surprising that nobody foresaw the eruption of the Arab armies that was to occur a few years later. What was even less foreseeable was that these same Arab armies would be fighting in the name of a new religion that was to stop the expansion of Christianity in its tracks in the South and East. Thereafter, Christianity would expand to the north and the north-east.

If any Roman or Persian general had actually observed the Battle of Badr, they would probably have laughed at the numbers involved. Yet the repercussions were to be stunning. So lets go back to the question of what could have happened if the Muslims had lost this battle. We can say with a high degree of probability that as a consequence Islam as a religion would have been extinguished. What could be the consequences of that?

The empire that the Arabs established was not just a military one. For a people who were essentially tribal, the Arabs forged an astonishingly cosmopolitan and advanced looking society within an incredibly short period of time. One result of their conquests was that they acquired a large body of knowledge of various sciences. This they preserved. More importantly, this body was translated into Arabic and the work was then extended by Arab scholars. Nor was this the only contribution. The Arab empire also had (relatively) easy access to China and India. Arab rulers actively encouraged the importation and absorption of advanced in various sciences and technologies made by these cultures. So we had the spread of paper making techniques for example or much more importantly the incorporation of the concept of zero into mathematics.

Today, people who want to acquire advanced cutting-edge knowledge try to get admission into various universities in Western countries. At that time, people would try and get admission into various Arab educational institutes for the same purpose. So the Arab Muslim empire not only preserved the ancient knowledge, it extended and transmitted it to a wide range of people who then went back to their countries and set up educational institutes along the same lines. What is the genesis of Oxford and Cambridge? It is to be found in the educational structures that the early Arabs put up. Why did the Arabs do all this? Interestingly enough it was because of Islam. The Koran repeatedly points out to various natural phenomena as evidence of God's power and challenges its readers to study and think about them. The Hadith (collections of sayings of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)) repeatedly emphasize the importance of education for both men and women. I mentioned above that in earlier times, religion was of extreme importance in the daily lives of people. For the Arabs who conquered Persia and vast swathes of the Roman empire, preserving, extending and spreading knowledge was a religiously sanctioned activity. In the process they forged a dynamic, cosmopolitan society at a time when the Church had a stranglehold on all aspects of Christian life.

If the Battle of Badr had been lost and as a result Islam extinguished, the Arabs would most likely not have ventured out of Arabia at all. If they had, they would not have been a coherent military force like they actually were. The most likely result would have been a three way standoff between Persia, Rome and the Arabs. Let's say that they managed to make the conquests that they actually did. Their empire in the absence of Islam would have been a military one much like the Mongol empire which came later. Over time, the Arabs would have been absorbed into the local culture just like the Mongols were. A new culture incorporating and expanding elements of the existing cultures and adding new ones to create something new and unique would not have arisen. Almost certainly important works by the ancient Greek scholars would have been lost; the Church at that time being intolerant of all knowledge which it did not specifically sanction. The important work that Arab scholars did in preserving, translating, extending and transmitting this knowledge would have not have taken place. Universities would not have been established in Europe at the time that they were and in the shape that they were. Indeed there is a possibility that universities would not have been established in Europe at all. This has a direct impact on the modern world since the great universities of the US are direct descendants of European universities like Oxford.

All the lost knowledge would have had to be re-discovered painstakingly over the centuries. Knowledge builds on the works of earlier generations. Re-discovering work done by the ancients would have pushed the existing state of knowledge by several centuries. This has a direct bearing on technology. Technological advancement rides on the back of pure science. We can build a reliable electricity infrastructure because we know the fundamental properties of electricity. In the absence of this we would not have been able to get consistent electricity.

The Arab influence can also be seen in other spheres. The whole concept of chivalry which played such an important role in medieval Europe and which was later to influence the concept of what being a gentleman entailed was heavily influenced by the Arab concept of chivalry. This in turn was influenced by Islamic doctrine. I would say that the Arabs refined their concept of chivalry after Islam. In the absence of Islam, this whole concept would have been different and would certainly not have influenced European notions of chivalry in the way it did. This means that today our idea of what being a gentleman means would have been very different. There are countless other examples of the many different ways in which Islam and the Arabs influenced the development of the modern world. Without Islam, these developments would have been very different both in scope, scale and timeline.

Before I conclude, there is another point to address that can arise in the reader's mind. Without Islam, the world would not be facing the problem of misdirected Islamic fundamentalism. My response to that is that without Islam, the world today would be in a very different form and in my opinion a much poorer place.

We normally tend to view history as a series of grand events. Empires operating on an epic scale. Clashes that are titanic in nature. Yet in the development of the world, it is often the small, unknown event that effects much greater, more far reaching change. The Battle of Badr is just such an event. If the battle had been lost, Islam would have been extinguished and had that happened, the repercussions would have flowed through time causing some events to not happen, others to happen differently and still others to happen which actually did not occur. The world today would have been a different and almost certainly poorer place not only economically but also culturally.