Privacy of the modern individual

I want to focus for a while on a comment by Feenberg: "The organic community of speech, based on repetition and performance, gives way to the privacy of the modern individual." Feenberg's context for this comment is the observed shift away from the spoken discourse, amongst many, in the church hall - to the written discourse of individuals, alone, with their computers.

I wish to first focus on the "privacy of the modern individual". Feenberg's modern individual is an online individual. Yes, the online individual is usually private - in the physically isolated sense. However privacy is more than being physically alone, there are additional ways to define separateness online. These include the level of disclosure, intimacy and control of the individual. Separateness online is actually quite difficult to sustain online [refs from Sian] - and I will speak about that later. I think it is important to differentiate 'private' from 'personal'. I suspect that 'personal' might better describe the distinction Feenberg is wanting to make. He is perhaps not saying that the modern individual is alone and not participating, but alternatively that he is making choices about what to engage with. The modern individual has choice, and choice means control. And the modern individual chooses to make the public space his private space. He does this offline by listening to i-pods and watching videos on trains and buses [ref]. He does this online by being personal in weblogs, chatrooms, and discussion boards. How can one describe an individual as 'private' when his identity is known to an online community, and the subject matter shared is intimate? [Note: lead to discussion of compartmentalisation]

The essential requirement for online privacy is control. The autonomy of the online environment enables the individual to control the overlapping circles of the privacy Venn Diagram. I spoke in my previous essay about how the weblog owner controls all the elements of their weblog, and that this control conveys a sense of safety. Yes, control conveys a sense of safety - and a sense of privacy - and an ability to be personal, publicly. Control is the dimmer switch on the public/private continuum. It is choice and control which are legacy of the modern individual, a bequest which allows him to flit between public and private, as desired. Feenberg's 'privacy' is merely an artefact.