Questioning the unquestionable: Are we too concerned about privacy?

Before you slam the door on that question, let's consider what possible upside there could be to sharing information we've long kept private. In an interesting article on MercuryNews.com (The Case for Oversharing), Chris O'Brien does a great service, I believe, by questioning that which we believe to be an unquestionable truth: Are there benefits to sharing more information online. I think it's good to question these beliefs because firmly held beliefs have the unfortunate tendency of excluding everything, good or bad, that doesn't ascribe to the belief firmly held. Which means that, if there are positives outside that belief system, they will never be found.

O'Brien offers a couple of examples of online services in development that will ask you to share information that you might consider very personal, like financial data. The benefit of this openness is that, by sharing this information, and having access to information provided by a community of others, you can see how, for example, your spending compares to others. If you discovered that you were paying $120 for  your residential phone service, but that lots of people were paying less than $30 for the same service, wouldn't you investigate and find out why. (This basically describes the circumstances that led me to switch from a large phone company to a VoIP service a few years ago.)

Here's a question to ponder: Why is it culturally forbidden to talk about your salary with co-workers? If you knew how your salary compared to those of the dozen or so people who do the same job you do, wouldn't that have value? (Many corporations actually have policies forbidding you to disclose your salary, which is a clear indication of who benefits most from this particular taboo.)

[By the way, interesting discussion here on this specific topic.]

So perhaps it's possible that we should consider the benefits of less privacy. Maybe we can come up with a way to protect ourselves from those who mean us harm and still enjoy the benefits of being more informed.