Born on the Net

Yesterday, baby Sean was born on the Internet. As her mother went into labour in a Florida hospital, cameras in the delivery room relayed li...

Yesterday, baby Sean was born on the Internet. As her mother went into labour in a Florida hospital, cameras in the delivery room relayed live footage all over the world. America8217;s Health Network, which ran the Netcast, hopes it will wake people up to the reality that the trauma of motherhood is a myth. But it is also a wake-up call of another nature. Baby Sean marks the birth of a society with new demarcations for the private and public spheres 8212; or perhaps a lack of such demarcation.

The cameras in Florida were set at quot;discreet anglesquot; but in the information society that is almost upon us, the public gaze may not be as discreet. And it may be mercilessly unforgiving. Happily, though, Sean is not a nuncio for Big Brother. That worthy lived and died 8212; as is meticulously recorded 8212; in the twentieth century. True, the latter event occurred well after 1984, but the whole experiment has definitely failed, and is not likely to gain wide popularity ever again.

One of the founding principles of theinformation age is unrestricted access. It may seem a trifle utopian, but it cannot be denied that the world over, even in the most benighted of places, an ever-increasing fraction of the population has access to relatively authentic information through the media in its various incarnations, and from libraries, databases, institutions and government agencies. So far, however, only information in the public domain has been freely available. Sean8217;s birth is a defining event in the gradual blurring of the hitherto sacrosanct divide between private and public domains. Before him, there have been people who continuously broadcast their whole lives to the Internet through digital cameras in their offices, living rooms, kitchens, even their bedrooms. They are routinely dismissed as perverts and exhibitionists, but they are really living signs that man has mutated successfully to survive in the infoworld.

An often catastrophic loss of privacy 8212; Diana8217;s was an extreme case 8212; is the price exacted from everyone inpublic life. Soon, every citizen may have to pay in the same coin as all lives go public.

The US took the first step in this direction with the social security number. In exchange for giving citizens access to the welfare services of the state, it also ensures that all citizens are transparent to the state. Privacy is exchanged for protection. The Indian taxman8217;s PAN number is a small, belated step in the same direction. The way ahead is shown by a legislation which is all but forgotten now: the Right to Information Bill. The information age, which believes that complete freedom lies in complete transparency, is one in which no one is in complete charge. Its foundations are made secure by expelling Big Brother, by universalising transparency. If the head of state has the right to snoop on a citizen, the latter must have an equal right to call for the big man8217;s records. There is one catch to this wonderful world, though. Big Brother is dead, but an even more frightening monster is born: the unwavering,unblinking, inhumanly remote public gaze. Born, like little Sean, on the Internet.