I had said we'd soon be living in glass houses. Everything about our lives may prove visible to everybody else.

Mr Miyagi's column was triggered by a recent case where a polytechnic student had her mobile phone stolen. In it, unfortunately, was a 10-minute video clip of herself having sex with her boyfriend. The still-unidentified thief, finding that video, uploaded it onto the internet and before you could say, "Whoa!" it had been widely disseminated.

In a 1998 article about the introduction of Electronic Road Pricing, Big brother's name is Erp, I remarked on how the technology may mean that the authorities will be able to track the location of any car.

That is so eight years ago. Today, with virtually everyone having a mobile phone, the cellular network should be able to track where anyone is -– not just vehicles -- since the phone goes wherever we go most of the time.

At the same time, the amount of information about ourselves that we upload to various servers is exploding. At first, it was bank transactions, then online purchases, soon after, just about all our correspondence. Now we're putting stuff up there even when we don't absolutely have to. We blog our innermost thoughts, we use online photo albums, we install webcams to monitor our homes while we're away, video streaming the insides of our homes to remote computers in the name of keeping an eye on our children and our maids. Not to mention the fact that it's no hard thing for someone somewhere to monitor what TV programs we watch or what pornography we download.

Just last night, when someone asked me for my email address, but neither of us had a pen ready, I said, "Oh, don't bother writing anything down. Just google my name, and you'll find a way to reach me."

True enough, I got an email from her this morning.

* * * * *

Privacy may represent for us our autonomy and peace of mind, but first and foremost, it is a utilitarian thing. We need to control the release of information about ourselves simply because that information may be used against us.

I'm not particularly referring to incriminating behaviour, such as consumption of illegal drugs or having sex with underaged girls, but all sorts of thoughts, behaviour and traits which, while not criminal, may be the source of embarrassment, ridicule, voyeurism, discrimination and even danger. Thus people might want not to publicise the fact that they have a genital deformity, or that they've been dumped by 6 girlfriends in a row. Those with a parent who had committed a heinous crime would be concerned about who got to know this.

On a different tack, some people may consider their income a highly sensitive and therefore private matter. They may be earning so much that they may be at risk of kidnappers (or greedy relatives) if their wealth were known. Others may be earning so little, it's downright embarrassing to reveal it, since we tend to equate wealth with inherent worth.

Yet, if we don't take the trouble to think ahead and put counter-measures in place, all this may be knowable to the entire world, given the advances in information technology.

Clearly we need rules about how data is protected. But what is less apparent and perhaps more insidious is the informal use of information. By this, I mean the way people treat others based on what they learn about them.

Take the poor girl who video'd herself having sex with her boyfriend. Reporters and busybodies started asking the polytechnic where she was a student what they were going to do about it. The school responded that if the sex act had taken place on school property, they would most certainly do something. As it turned out, it didn't take place there, but even then, the student was asked to undergo "counselling". Why? And God only knows what the gossip mill is saying about her and her boyfriend, her breast size, his dick size or their skills at sex.

Through all this, no one seemed too concerned that she was the victim of a crime -– the theft of the phone -- not the perpetrator, yet she became the focus of social, media and institutional interest.

This kind of "interest" often serves the subconscious desire for social control. As much as governments and large organisations can abuse information about us to regulate our lives, so individuals acting collectively can use information to wield social control. Their means include shame, embarrassment, ridicule, "glare" and marginalisation.

Alas, the opportunity for this kind of thing increases commensurately with advances in information technology. More and more things will be known about us; it's a byproduct of the technology. The brick walls of our homes are dissolving into glass.

If we are to maintain enough autonomy in our lives to remain sane, our impulse to control each other whether through laws or social pressure has to be curbed. If we're not careful, the tidal wave of available information about our neighbours (and in the global village, everybody else is our neighbour) will carry us towards a level of prurient interest and intrusiveness that can make community life a living hell. It is essential for us to make deliberate efforts to turn away from that default direction.

To begin with, we need to be more conscious of how we ourselves, sometimes mindlessly, use such information to hurt, belittle or control others. We need to examine how we associate wealth, physical traits, behavioural preferences and life circumstances with human worth.

Say John has a criminal record. How do we react to him? What if we know Arthur was once a callboy in order to pay his way through school? What if Ernest regularly visits brothels, Keith over there is HIV-positive, and Wallace has only one descended testicle?

We're going to know all this. The big ethical question concerns what we do with the information. I think the answer is obvious: we should try our utmost to overlook differences, and not to (de)valorise people if they don't meet our personal, subjective standards. However, I'll be the first to admit that actually getting ourselves to think nobly is very, very hard to do. I mean, if we know so-and-so has a 2-inch dick, how many of us can sincerely say it won't change the way we see him one iota?

So our conscious and socially-responsible selves say that discrimination and social control should be pushed back. But if so, shouldn't laws that reflect the same impulses be repealed? Should there be so many laws that control consensual sex, paid sex, nudity and pornography? Should so many laws require people to divulge financial information, family background or health status?

Going further, should we enact laws that positively compel non-discrimination, or institute affirmative action to help the marginalised? This is especially with those who previously might once have been able to conceal their disadvantaging trait, e.g. homosexuality, but in the information age, will be revealed with a click of a mouse.

* * * * *

Talking about homosexuality, this raises another aspect to this discussion.

The kinds of information that are considered sensitive vary from person to person. For example, I'm sure it won't occur to any heterosexual person in this world to consider his sexual orientation a private matter. But it's a big issue to many bisexuals and homosexuals. We should reflect on this and ask ourselves, why?

This points to the need for each of us not to assume that what we consider as harmless to disclose is always the case for others too. They may want privacy in areas that we don't feel too concerned about.

There are also cultural differences.

Last weekend, I was at a dinner party at a friend's apartment. A white Australian guest, visiting Singapore, was surprised at how often and cavalierly, Singaporeans asked each other about their age. People seemed to have no qualms about answering too; no offence was taken at the question. Age seemed much less a fact worthy of privacy in our culture than in the Australian's.

A photograph of someone in speedo swimwear is not a big deal in Asia, Europe or Australia. However, circulating such a picture may be considered a bit more threatening to a heterosexual American male if he's the one in the picture. Americans generally feel uncomfortably exposed if they're seen in anything shorter than baggy knee-length beach shorts.

So even as we need, in the coming age, to be unusually conscious about not exploiting the information available to us about others, making an effort to refrain from invading their privacy or regulating their lives, we also need, in a world where distance is rapidly collapsing, to be sensitive to social and cultural differences as well. What's "no big deal" to us may be a sensitive matter to others.

It seems that we need a quantum leap in self-awareness and self-restraint. We need to completely re-examine what we mean by social norms lest we unthinkingly use these to beat others by. These profound ethical and moral questions are the challenges placed before us by the technology of our age.

© Yawning Bread