Internet threads from 40 years in the future.

[alcibiades_mystery]

3. It's more likely that 40 years into the future, conceptions of privacy will be completely changed

The notions of privacy that fuel this controversy are a historically specific and contingent creation, always subject to change. Indeed, they're of fairly recent vintage, historically speaking. "Privacy" itself has already changed a great deal since its early uses in modernity. In 40 years, it will be a historical relic. It probably already is. We allow massive amounts of information about ourselves to circulate. We also learn that it's not the end of the world: we're not yeoman farmers, isolated upon the land. Privacy was invented, and largely in that context. It will be transformed utterly by our new archiving and data analysis capacities. We subject ourselves to big data algorithms all day long. Nobody blinks at the very notion of search engine optimization, or even the far more specific information collected every second we engage online, on our phones, in public spaces, through toll plazas. You think a notion of privacy invented in the 19th century will survive that? It's just a fucking utterly silly notion. In 40 years, there will be completely transformed understandings of the self. Not this ridiculous nostalgia all the time, but actual fruitful approaches to the big data age.