Privacy and the Network

It took me a while to thumbnail-ify it, but this is the poster that I submitted as the major assignment in last term's SOCI209: Society, Technology, and Values (PDF) course.

Click to see the full-size ~380KB version. I don't think I'll link to the 8MB PNG original.

My goal in creating the poster was to show that the value we place on privacy is in a steady state of decline since the advent of digitized persistent storage -- the Network -- and increases only transiently through public shocks of violation.

I was never entirely satisfied that the poster's narrative was sufficiently persuasive, and visually it's too wordy, but I still think it looks pretty sweet. The glossy 2' x 3' version hangs over my desk at the College and never fails to impress...me.

I created it using Macromedia Adobe Fireworks, the only graphics program I've ever even partly glommed. Probably the trickiest bit was drawing the green circuit-board-ey border.

Of course, the day after I dropped it off at Staples to be printed, Google announced their acquisition of DoubleClick. One more slight upward blip in our value of privacy before the bottom drops out.