Is Privacy dead? Or just Modesty?

As I have noted before, Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy was famously quoted saying: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." But that was said way back in 1999!!  Back then, there was no Facebook, no MySpace, no Twitter, nor LinkedIn; Google was barely a year old.
 And privacy was already dead?!? (Where was I?)

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook recently said in an interview that "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." And then went on to say that “ …we view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are," he said.

Interesting. So is Facebook and other social networking sites only reflections of what is currently acceptable in society at this point in time? If that is the case, then why must there be laws, for example,  against drunk driving if people should know when to quit (the social norm) and not to do something dangerous like get behind the wheel after too many cocktails? Yet we have had to put laws in place that actually define what is drunk in the legal sense (i.e. blood alcohol level). Self-regulation, at least in this instance of personal behaviour, does not universally work out so well.

So what drives what? Does Facebook reflect the new normalcy of openness or does it merely provide an outlet for pent–up desire for everyone to engage in a community, share some intimate details with friends (but mostly acquaintances), and attempt to parse the much desired 15 minutes of fame into smaller, longer bits. Are our egos crowding out the sense of Victorain modesty that used to prevail in company of strangers, or even friends? With 350 million users now on Facebook, it is difficult to believe that only the extroverts have inherited the Earth…..

The question is: are sites like Facebook (not the only enabler here) simply the exploitation tool that drives the users to reveal more private detail, or rather, just the medium? Social networking sites like FB can be no different than videos like “Girls Gone Wild.” This outlet more than enables bad behavior; it rewards it with some kind of validation and exposure. But then again, should I be able to blame the New Jersey Turnpike for me being caught going 100 miles an hour…..?