Keen On

From Luther to Zuckerberg: Who killed Privacy?

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Sinopsis

So who killed privacy? It's the central question of Tiffany Jenkins' provocative new history of private life, Strangers and Intimates. The answer, according to Jenkins, is that we are all complicit—having gradually and often accidentally contributed to privacy's demise from the 16th century onwards. Luther started it by challenging Papal religious authority and the public sacraments, thereby creating the necessity of private conscience. Then came Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Hobbes who carved out bounded private political and economic spheres establishing the foundations for modern capitalism and democracy. Counter-enlightenment romantics like Rousseau reacted against this by fetishizing individual innocence and authenticity, while the Victorians elevated the domestic realm as sacred. Last but not least, there's Mark Zuckerberg's socially networked age, in which we voluntarily broadcast our private lives to a worldwide audience. But why, I ask Jenkins, should we care about the death of private li