When you got up this morning, did you immediately update your Twitter account? How many pictures of you are tagged on Facebook? When was the last time you posted a videoon YouTube? If you answered “yes, a lot, and recently,” you’re not alone. So here’s one more question: As we continue to display our lives to the eyes of the World Wide Web, are we chipping away at our very notion of and right to privacy?
We Live in Public is a voyeuristic and captivating look at our growing dependence on the Internet, through the bizarre world of Internet entrepreneur Josh Harris as he rides the rise and fall of the 1990s dot-com boom and bust. A successful businessman-artist, Harris was one of the most eccentric characters of Silicon Alley, carrying out extreme social experiments that foreshadowed the current craze for social networking.
First there was “Quiet.” Harris asked 100 people to live under constant surveillance in an underground bunker in New York City for 30 days leading up to the new millennium–broadcasting all of their actions to everyone else in the space. The experiment demonstrated that people would sacrifice privacy for public recognition. Emotions intensified and participants’ mental stability began to falter. The police shut down “Quiet” on New Year’s Day.
The next logical step for Harris was turning the camera on himself. For six months, he and girlfriend Tanya Corrin lived with 32 cameras in his Soho loft and broadcast their lives to viewers on WeLiveInPublic.com. The relationship devolved, the money ran dry, Harris broke down and all but disappeared.
