The Future of Reputation or Essay on the Principle of Population

The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

Author: Daniel J Solov

Teeming with chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs, the Internet offers previously unimagined opportunities for personal expression and communication. But there’s a dark side to the story. A trail of information fragments about us is forever preserved on the Internet, instantly available in a Google search. A permanent chronicle of our private lives—often of dubious reliability and sometimes totally false—will follow us wherever we go, accessible to friends, strangers, dates, employers, neighbors, relatives, and anyone else who cares to look. This engrossing book, brimming with amazing examples of gossip, slander, and rumor on the Internet, explores the profound implications of the online collision between free speech and privacy.

 

Daniel Solove, an authority on information privacy law, offers a fascinating account of how the Internet is transforming gossip, the way we shame others, and our ability to protect our own reputations. Focusing on blogs, Internet communities, cybermobs, and other current trends, he shows that, ironically, the unconstrained flow of information on the Internet may impede opportunities for self-development and freedom. Long-standing notions of privacy need review, the author contends: unless we establish a balance between privacy and free speech, we may discover that the freedom of the Internet makes us less free.

 

Table of Contents:

Preface     vii
Introduction: When Poop Goes Primetime     1
Rumor and Reputation in a Digital World
How the Free Flow of Information Liberates and Constrains Us     17
Gossip and the Virtues of Knowing Less     50
Shaming and the Digital Scarlet Letter     76
Privacy, Free Speech, and the Law
The Role of Law     105
Free Speech, Anonymity, and Accountability     125
Privacy in an Overexposed World     161
Conclusion: The Future of Reputation     189
Notes     207
Index     237

Book about: Purple Cow or Suze Ormans Will and Trust Kit

Essay on the Principle of Population (Penguin Classic)

Author: Thomas Robert Malthus

Malthus's simple yet powerful argument was highly controversial in its day. Literary England despised him for dashing its hopes of social progress; today his name remains a byword for active concern about man's demographic and ecological prospects.