While digging the footings of our extension, we dumped the soil and debris on the edge of our meadow. We didn’t have an immediate plan for it, but intended to use it to create structure in the meadow. Time has gone on and dealing with it has not been a high priority. In this time, the kids have made trails, made holes, made fires, and called it ‘Mud Mountain’. They love it.

What I think of as an eyesore and another job to be done, they see as a wonderland of joy. Same pile of mud; radically different perspectives.

This happens all the time in life. And not just with children and adults. It happens too in the digital space where we try to define for others what sensitive data is. We don’t ask them, we bring our view of the world to it and impose it on them. However, as a white, western European, male, my experience of the police, government, business, religion, and so on is radically different than most of the rest of the world. Therefore, what I deem to be sensitive data is likely different than many others.

Same dataset; radically different perspectives.

Photo by Annie Spratt