6I have taken the terms, “personal information” and “social information” from (Danchin et al. 2004)
7
radio station or newspaper itself than if one must rely on a soapbox in the public square. Nevertheless,
history provides examples of those with rhetorical competence and other capabilities (Martin Luther, for
one; Martin Luther King, Jr., for the other) that allowed their messages to be heard over the contending
messages of those with greater material resources. Moreover, digital technologies allow individuals to
disseminate all sorts of information, from viruses to blogs, with great ease and at little cost.
III. Information space, privacy, and the flow of information
The agent who can control the content of information and to whom, when, and how it goes has
power – power to create the complex of social structures within which people live, power to get others to
do what they would not otherwise do if they had different or more complete information, power to get more
power. The relational aspect is important: The agent wishes to send information to someone (or keep the
information secret from someone) or receive information from someone (or avoid learning the information
from someone). By definition, agents interact with others vis-a-vis information.
Imagine a person (or any other social agent) within an information space – a virtual territory
containing information – ringed by a barrier. The space inside the wall contains all the information the
person “has”: intrinsic information, which refers to fundamental information about information about the
self, such as its genetic code and the details of neurons firing, to which the individual does not have direct
conscious access; personal information, which the individual acquires directly by himself; and social
information, which she learns vicariously by observing and learning from others.6 Intrinsic information is,
of course, important – we would not exist without our genetic information encoded within the cells of our
Convention