In sum, transparency does not guarantee trust. It can, in fact, prove effective at eroding it – especially when the expectation of transparency and the available technological tools nudge the suspicious to engage in more invasive forms of investigation or surveillance. One woman I interviewed, who asked that her name not be revealed, was suspicious that her live-in boyfriend of two years was unfaithful when her own frequent business trips took her away from home. Unwilling to confront him directly with her doubts, she turned to a technological solution. Unbeknownst to him, she installed a popular brand of “spyware” on his computer, which recorded every keystroke he made and took snapshots of his screen every three minutes – information that the program then e-mailed to her for inspection. “My suspicions were founded gorgeousbrides.net ir a estes tipos,” she said, although the revelation was hardly good news. “He was spending hours online looking at porn, and going to ‘hook-up’ chatrooms seeking sex with strangers. I even tracked his ATM withdrawals to locations near his scheduled meetings with other women.”
Considering the amount of information she could find out about her partner by merely surfing the Internet, she rationalized her use of spyware as just one more tool – if a slightly more invasive one – at the disposal of those seeking information about another person. As our technologies give us ever-greater power to uncover more about each other, demand for transparency rises, and our expectations of privacy decline.
That online dating isn’t so different from regular dating
The other destructive tendency our technologies encourage is over-sharing – that is, revealing too much, too quickly, in the hope of connecting to another person. The opportunities for instant communication are so ubiquitous – e-mail, instant messaging, chatrooms, cell phones, Palm Pilots, BlackBerrys, and the like – that the notion of making ourselves unavailable to anyone is unheard of, and constant access a near-requirement. Continue reading
