Publicy

The opposite of privacy. A neologism which has been promoted by social media guru Stowe Boyd as a counter to ‘privacy’ in its more controversial online contexts. He claims it will be the defining concept of the next decade. In his words, ‘rather than concealing things, and limiting access to those explicitly invited, tools based on publicy default to things being open and with open access.’ In looking at how providers and users choose to regulate digital content and steer social interactions, Wired magazine has preferred the term sociality, (originating in the jargon of sociology and biology to describe the degree to which animals are prepared to socialise) to designate the possible new default settings for social networking sites. Some claim that behind the simply technical aspects of changing setting-priorities lies a quite new response to digitality (the condition of existing in a digitalised world), a philosophy which, while not totally discounting privacy, transcends outmoded traditions of secrecy and anonymity. Others have observed pointedly that in an era of the free no-one makes money by creating private communities.

TONY THORNE

Send your buzzwords, jargon and new and exotic usages to tony.thorne@kcl.ac.uk