[Ailist] Discussion of the book The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet

[Stephanie West Allen]

Excerpt:

 >>. . . I’ll be posting a review of Dan Solove’s book The Future of  
Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet (Yale Univ.  
Press, Oct. 2007) sometime this afternoon evening week lifecycle. One  
reason I can’t seem to wrap up the review, is that the book keeps  
leading me to so many interesting topics. For instance, the history  
of the concept and the word “gossip.” In The Future of Reputation,  
Prof. Solove points out that “Gossip is often thought of as unseemly,  
but it has both good and bad qualities.” He continues:

“As the philosopher Aaron Ben Ze’ev observes, ‘Gossip is engaged in  
for pleasure, not for the purpose of hurting someone.’ . . . Indeed,  
much gossip isn’t malicious, and it is something that most of us  
engage in. Although people quickly denounce gossip, it remains  
ubiquitous. According to one study, about two-thirds of all  
conversations involve gossip, and as one writer [Keith Devlin] sums  
it up, ‘What people talk about is mostly other people’.”

Solove explains how gossip is used to shape reputations and help  
enforce societal norms. He (rightly) worries that the internet has  
transformed gossip and shaming from “forgettable whispers within  
small local groups to a widespread and permanent chronicle of  
people’s lives.” In this post, I’m wondering just how something that  
is natural and usually enjoyable, and that we all do (usually without  
guilt or even a reason to feel guilty) has come to have such a  
negative reputation.<<

Read the rest here:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/ethicalesq/2007/11/07/good-gossip-bad- 
gossip/

Best,

Stephanie

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Stephanie West Allen, JD
http://www.brainsonpurpose.com
http://www.idealawg.net
Denver, CO USA