[Editor's note: The theme of the Winter 2010-2011 issue of World Policy Journal is “Megalopolis: The City of the 21st Century.” We asked experts, policymakers, and writers from around the world to answer this question: “In the future, what will our cities look like?”]
By Conor Friedersdorf
In today’s cities, it is equally possible to connect or to float free.
People are all around, so there are unparalleled opportunities to date or network or play pickup basketball or put together an indie band or compete weekly in an organized cricket league, or merely to make flirty eye-contact on the subway.
And yet: is there any place better than New York City or Shanghai or Mexico City to walk anonymously among multitudes, seen by no one, whether you're trying to reinvent yourself, or indulge in selfish pursuits, or score a few joints without your mother finding out, or party like a lead singer at night without anyone knowing you're a waiter by day?
In the future, urban populations will face myriad challenges to the personal privacy that enables our current level of choice. The value judgments they make about connectedness versus privacy — and their ability to shape rather than be shaped by technology — will spread to the suburbs and beyond, shaping the normative ethos of tomorrow.
Cities of the future aren’t likely to continue offering their denizens the best of both worlds. The smart phone may permit them to better know the whereabouts of friends and acquaintances, but only in ways that facilitate semi-spontaneous happy hour meet-ups. (Fun!) Cyberspace will enable the socially awkward to flirt via IM. But patronize a sex shop, or a gay bar, or Sunday morning services at a Catholic Church, and who knows when a passerby might snap a cell phone photo, post it to the Web, and expose your embarrassing activities to your Facebook friends/Jewish mother. Forget about 1984: our dystopian prophecy is Gossip Girl.
Conor Friedersdorf is the senior editor of The Daily Dish, Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic.
[Image courtesy of Flickr user alancleaver_2000.]