About this ebook
American essayist and Harper's contributing editor Garret Keizer offers a brilliant, literate look at our strip-searched, over-shared, viral-videoed existence.
Body scans at the airport, candid pics on Facebook, a Twitter account for your stray thoughts, and a surveillance camera on every street corner -- today we have an audience for all of the extraordinary and banal events of our lives. The threshold between privacy and exposure becomes more permeable by the minute. But what happens to our private selves when we cannot escape scrutiny, and to our public personas when they pass from our control?
In this wide-ranging, penetrating addition to the Big Ideas//Small Books series, and in his own unmistakable voice, Garret Keizer considers the moral dimensions of privacy in relation to issues of social justice, economic inequality, and the increasing commoditization of the global marketplace. Though acutely aware of the digital threat to privacy rights, Keizer refuses to see privacy in purely technological terms or as an essentially legalistic value. Instead, he locates privacy in the human capacity for resistance and in the sustainable society "with liberty and justice for all."
Body scans at the airport, candid pics on Facebook, a Twitter account for your stray thoughts, and a surveillance camera on every street corner -- today we have an audience for all of the extraordinary and banal events of our lives. The threshold between privacy and exposure becomes more permeable by the minute. But what happens to our private selves when we cannot escape scrutiny, and to our public personas when they pass from our control?
In this wide-ranging, penetrating addition to the Big Ideas//Small Books series, and in his own unmistakable voice, Garret Keizer considers the moral dimensions of privacy in relation to issues of social justice, economic inequality, and the increasing commoditization of the global marketplace. Though acutely aware of the digital threat to privacy rights, Keizer refuses to see privacy in purely technological terms or as an essentially legalistic value. Instead, he locates privacy in the human capacity for resistance and in the sustainable society "with liberty and justice for all."
Ratings and reviews
3.7
6 reviews
Leo Steeves
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December 5, 2019
This seems to be the ramblings of a boomer reminiscing of the good old days while being mildly racist, trashing the left and academia, and correlating things without causation. Altogether it's not very clear and doesn't say much that makes privacy (at least what is being talking about today) seem very important, unless you already think it is.
Daniel Lamando
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May 1, 2013
Required read for a university-level privacy-centric English course. Found myself getting really interested and ended up extensively highlighting most of the chapters in the process. However, doesn't seem to conclusive about privacy; rather, this writing tends to just talk about it in different ways a bit. Would still recommend.
Jamie Perez
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October 3, 2014
It's an interesting look, into pricacy. An eerie perspective...
About the author
Garret Keizer is the author of six books, mostly recently of The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want: A Book About Noise. He is a contributing editor of Harper's Magazine, a contributing writer to Mother Jones, and a recent Guggenheim Fellow.
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