A Shared Vocabulary for Privacy

Irwin Altman’s popular theory of privacy as a normalizing, dynamic, dialectic process regulating self-environment interactions is integrated with observations and conceptions of privacy drawn from ubicomp, law, architecture, sociology, and psychology. The result is a unified, holistic and comprehensive vocabulary for discussing privacy issues in the design of ubicomp systems, specifically ubiquitous video media spaces. The full vocabulary is rich with subtleties, and this paper presents a summary of material presented elsewhere [7]. The key elaboration of Altman’s theory deconstructs privacy into three synergisticallycoupled genres of control of self-environment boundaries. Solitude controls interpersonal interactions and attention. Confidentiality controls information access and fidelity. Autonomy controls observable manifestations of identity.