Only sometimes. Just as easily, it vanishes, forgotten, deleted, ignored. Silence is also low-effort. And just because something spreads easily doesn’t make it valuable. Fire spreads fast too, but we still build firewalls.
Well that would be Google…
Fair point, I misunderstood the scope of your earlier statement. But equal access doesn’t mean equal power. Not everyone has the time, tools, or safety to use that access. Surveillance doesn’t democratize information; it concentrates control.
If your “superdemocracy” is just putting everyone’s secrets on Google, then it sounds a lot like our world today, except with fewer boundaries and more vulnerability. You get to know what I had for dinner; the government gets to know who disagrees with it. I’m not seeing the upgrade.
And do you have a practical replacement for what privacy protects? Because honestly, your “counterargument” rests on shaky ground.
Historically, removing the right to privacy hasn’t led to openness, instead it’s paved the way for authoritarian control, censorship, and the suppression of dissent. So why should we believe this time it’ll somehow result in a “super cool superdemocracy”?
And more to the point: how exactly does not being allowed to record every action I take in my own home and upload it to Google cause a “state of deformity and disease”? That… doesn’t make sense. It sounds less like “the physics of information” and more like a thought experiment untethered from human reality.
It might just be the taboo of the hour.
Possibly. But privacy, having a space for solitude, reflection, and error, has been valued in every society I’m aware of. Be it in homes, letters, diaries, or faith. Given it’s ubiquity, I don’t think it’s fashion. Rather, it seems to be human nature. Mental health, identity, creativity, for many these depend on room to grow unseen.
That’s a stretch.
In light of your clarification, yes, partly. But if we’re talking total openness as ideal, then autonomy is the casualty. That part isn’t hyperbole.
The constraining force isn’t free information, it’s judgment and persecution.
Exactly. And privacy is the defense against that judgment. It doesn’t inhibit free flow, it enables it. People stop asking questions when they’re watched. Whistleblowers stay silent. Artists self-censor. Privacy protects the conditions for free thought and expression.
You seem to want to examine privacy removed from its context, as if it were just a technical bottleneck. But its value emerges from the world we live in, a world with power imbalances, stigma, and consequences. Stripping away privacy lets these issues stifle the flow of information far more than privacy itself does. And speaking of removing something from the context that informs it’s value, what good is open information in a society where no one dares to think aloud?
Mine wasn’t a moral argument but physics. Fighting physics is exhausting.
Then let’s talk physics: entropy destroys data too. Hard drives fail. Links rot. Memories fade. Information doesn’t inevitably spread, it’s fragile. And the energy we but into propagating information is massive. But even if information did inherently spread by it’s very nature, “it’s tiring to resist” isn’t a justification to abandon the utilities of privacy.
And regardless I’d argue the opposite is far more exhausting: living where every search, stumble, or private moment is permanent, public, and open to weaponization. That’s not liberation. It’s a panopticon with better bandwidth.
Only sometimes. Just as easily, it vanishes, forgotten, deleted, ignored. Silence is also low-effort. And just because something spreads easily doesn’t make it valuable. Fire spreads fast too, but we still build firewalls.
Fair point, I misunderstood the scope of your earlier statement. But equal access doesn’t mean equal power. Not everyone has the time, tools, or safety to use that access. Surveillance doesn’t democratize information; it concentrates control.
If your “superdemocracy” is just putting everyone’s secrets on Google, then it sounds a lot like our world today, except with fewer boundaries and more vulnerability. You get to know what I had for dinner; the government gets to know who disagrees with it. I’m not seeing the upgrade.
And do you have a practical replacement for what privacy protects? Because honestly, your “counterargument” rests on shaky ground.
Historically, removing the right to privacy hasn’t led to openness, instead it’s paved the way for authoritarian control, censorship, and the suppression of dissent. So why should we believe this time it’ll somehow result in a “super cool superdemocracy”?
And more to the point: how exactly does not being allowed to record every action I take in my own home and upload it to Google cause a “state of deformity and disease”? That… doesn’t make sense. It sounds less like “the physics of information” and more like a thought experiment untethered from human reality.
Possibly. But privacy, having a space for solitude, reflection, and error, has been valued in every society I’m aware of. Be it in homes, letters, diaries, or faith. Given it’s ubiquity, I don’t think it’s fashion. Rather, it seems to be human nature. Mental health, identity, creativity, for many these depend on room to grow unseen.
In light of your clarification, yes, partly. But if we’re talking total openness as ideal, then autonomy is the casualty. That part isn’t hyperbole.
Exactly. And privacy is the defense against that judgment. It doesn’t inhibit free flow, it enables it. People stop asking questions when they’re watched. Whistleblowers stay silent. Artists self-censor. Privacy protects the conditions for free thought and expression.
You seem to want to examine privacy removed from its context, as if it were just a technical bottleneck. But its value emerges from the world we live in, a world with power imbalances, stigma, and consequences. Stripping away privacy lets these issues stifle the flow of information far more than privacy itself does. And speaking of removing something from the context that informs it’s value, what good is open information in a society where no one dares to think aloud?
Then let’s talk physics: entropy destroys data too. Hard drives fail. Links rot. Memories fade. Information doesn’t inevitably spread, it’s fragile. And the energy we but into propagating information is massive. But even if information did inherently spread by it’s very nature, “it’s tiring to resist” isn’t a justification to abandon the utilities of privacy.
And regardless I’d argue the opposite is far more exhausting: living where every search, stumble, or private moment is permanent, public, and open to weaponization. That’s not liberation. It’s a panopticon with better bandwidth.