From an anthropological perspective, you have a point, it's hard to keep important details from your neighbours in a small community. However secrets are still possible and in fact this is what gossip is, sharing knowledge which is not intended to be public, or which is not socially "okay" to share. This is what people become interested in.
There is a wealth of ethnographic research on this but unforunitely I can't access it, those damn academic paywalls ($36 for 24 hour access of one paper!). I found a few abstracts that looked interesting, such as this one:
Private spaces are one locus of public faces. Those who do not wish to be judged by others may close off their homes from observation. Conversely, those who wish intensely to be judged by others may open up their homes to scrutiny by all. In this ethnography of a wealthy ‘marina’ community in Southern California, private homes, boats and automobiles are the sites of pride, shame and stigma on the part of owners and residents, in ways that reflect gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality and age as well as enduring, general cultural norms (pride goeth before a fall).
This is what it boils down to in a way. @dan is not suggesting that some of us allow our homes to be open, but that we all must, in order to defeat the government. Is core contention is relevant (government has privacy from public, public has no privacy from gov) but we literally cannot have complete openness. There is always more to know, more to gather, analyse.
I saw The Circle also and while I would have given it a very mixed review it is good to see movies at least attempting to grapple with this issue. The real interesting part of the movie is what comes next though, how can the world of radical transparency be imaged? The movie ends before we find out.
Yeah the movie qua movie wasn't great. But through it I could sort of see the issues Dave Eggers probably was trying to raise in his book. I appreciated it philosophically if not cinematically.
There's an undercurrent of inevitability I think running beneath Dan's whole argument. He's sort of saying that, due to human nature, privacy is impossible: the question is who do we prefer being spied by.
Like I said in my reply to Dana above, I think people are quite willing, even eager, to spill the beans. They're desperate to get noticed. I think this, again, is due to our ancient nature as it evolved in small groups, where we were known and respected by every single member of the tribe. Whereas now, the tribe is global, and we're painfully aware that we don't exist for most people. Hence the appeal of fame. People don't wanna hide. They want to be their own Truman Show, with the whole world watching, being witness to every triviality of their life, Kim Kardashian Show-style.
Thats only because people are getting rich doing it. I don't think people actually desire it as much as you make it out.
People are presented the upside of fame by the media but the downside is hidden until a person truly becomes famous and figures out their life is ruined.