Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
work, he must be polite to the client and scrupulously avoid saying anything negative
about the client in front of any coworkers, lest he demoralize them, or even worse, lose
his job. In the privacy of his home, he can “blow off steam” by confiding in his wife,
who lends him a sympathetic ear and helps motivate him to get through the tough time
at work. If people did not have privacy, they would have to wear their public face at all
times, which could be damaging to their psychological health.
Privacy can foster intellectual activities. It allows us to shut out the rest of the world
so that we can focus our thoughts without interruption, be creative, and grow spiritually
[12, 13, 14].
Some maintain that privacy is the only way in which people can develop relation-
ships involving respect, love, friendship, and trust. You can think of privacy as “moral
capital” [15]. People use this capital to build intimate relationships. Taking away people's
privacy means taking away their moral capital. Without moral capital, they have no
means to develop close personal relationships.
In order to have different kinds of social relationships with different people, we need
to have some kind of control over who knows what about us [16]. You can imagine
everyone having a “ladder” of privacy [10]. At the top of the ladder is the person we
share the most information with. For many people, this person is their spouse. As we
work our way down the ladder, we encounter people we would share progressively less
information with. Here is an example of what someone's ladder of privacy might look
like:
spouse
priest/minister/rabbi/imam
brothers and sisters
parents
children
friends
in-laws
coworkers
neighbors
marketers
employers
government
news media
ex-spouses
potential rivals/enemies
Others are critical of suggestions that tie intimacy too closely to sharing informa-
tion [8]. A woman might tell her psychoanalyst things she would not even reveal to her
husband, but that does not imply that she experiences deeper intimacy with her psycho-
analyst than with her husband. Intimacy is not just about sharing information; it's also
