See Me, Click Me

Joseph Argabrite would rather live a public life than a private one. "It's therapeutic. It's like talking to someone," he says. Ingrid Wiese says, "There is a lack of shame I have in sharing my personal life." But there is, she says, "a certain narcissism in people who choose to live their private lives in the public." (Photos By Linda Davidson -- The Washington Post)

Though publizens are aware of diminished privacy in this post-Sept. 11 world, many don't see it as a sacrifice. Living publicly makes certain things easier -- storing information on someone else's server, using a credit card, meeting others.

For people such as Harlan J. Onsrud, a professor of spatial information at the University of Maine at Orono who has studied privacy issues, increased public exposure can even increase personal security. "I have put my picture on the Web. It enhances my security instead of detracting from it." When someone tries to cash a check with his name on it, Onsrud says, it will be very easy for the bank to know what Onsrud looks like.

The Inner Celebrity

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These days it's hard not to live a public life. "It's far more difficult to secure your privacy than not to secure your privacy," Onsrud says. "You often don't have the choice in this technological world."

He adds, "I'm always astounded about what people talk about in public."

Perhaps letting it all hang out in public has a flip side, says Lynne Layton, professor of psychology at Harvard. "There's not much else behind the surface, she says. "With all the running around that we all do all day and night, with the way middle class kids are scheduled, are we perhaps killing off the capacity to have an inner life?"

Kevin Kelly, a founding editor of Wired magazine, says that privacy is an illusion. "We've always been very public as a species." he says. "The very notion of privacy is recent, and probably temporary. Big Brother is a type of paranoia and egoism, because in fact most lives are not worth watching. With technology we are only returning to the global village where everyone knows what everyone else is doing."

Cultural anthropologist Danah Boyd says living a public life can be a healthy undertaking. In this culture of fear, "it is critical for young people to have some exposure to public life, to strangers," she says. "You need this to grow up."

Publizens like Dave Feinman, Ingrid Wiese and Joseph Argabrite thrive on the responses to their public lives. The exterior life for many is as important as, if not more important than, the interior life.

Signing on to star in a reality TV show like "Real World" or "Joe Schmo," "is about choosing to become a celebrity," Boyd says. "And the Internet looks a lot like a reality television show."

So everybody is famous, everyone is a public figure. And every life is lived out in the open. Which changes a lot of things. Libel lawyers may find it harder to determine just who is a public figure and who is not. There soon could be more people in reality TV shows than watching them. The Hollywood celebrity hierarchy could topple as the Ingrid Wieses become just as recognizable as the Angelina Jolies. And there could be a general sense spreading across the land that if it doesn't happen in public, it doesn't really happen.