I like the idea raised in “A Comprehensive Theoretical Framework…” by Beldad, Jong and Steehouder, that within the network society, our personal data becomes a commodity and we trade this inroad to our psyche for implied or promised benefits from Internet entities. Robert Bodle in, “Privacy and Participation…”  hits on this commoditization of one’s private self in relation to Google, a company whose presentation of self can appear rather amateur in the way it presents training videos and the accessibility of information but in reality is quite advanced. For one to consider the presentation of Google as a morphing entity, a personality that we as consumers and users of the interface can relate to means that our private selves can be summoned from the recesses of our physical bodies, excised and deposited into the network because Google is our pal!

Things became quite interesting once I began Sarah Michele Ford’s essay,”Reconceptualizing the Public…” in which she attempts to differentiate between public and private. She starts by drawing a line between spatial and personal privacy. Having lived for many years in situations where walls are always shared with roommates or next door neighbors, spatial privacy is something I feel very accustomed to experiencing. It changes the way you behave, speak and exist. The same is true for the ephemeral entities we express on the Internet and how coded language and deflections begin to be a necessity for the preservation of self. Ford’s mention of Jennifer Ringley is an interesting example of a woman who presented her everyday life 24 hours a day on the Internet for visitors to observe. The technology resulted in a series of still images as opposed to real-time video, but Foucault’s notion of panoptic surveillance is still in effect. Little did Ringley know that her first steps into self-exploitation and documentation would begin what is now classifiable as the “camgirl” phenomenon.

Jurgenson and Rey make a good point regarding Ford’s model of privacy and public as a continuum by drawing an analogy to the act of mixing paint. I love the references to Bataille with his consideration of “knowledge” begetting “non-knowledge,” and Baudrillard with his “obscene” versus “seduction,” both of which add up to a more circular, dialectical interaction of the public and private. This approach seems more accurate in describing the experience of social media “white wallers” and the like, but then again, nobody seems to really have a grip on the terminology and classification just yet. Everything is still up for grabs.