On his book Life After Privacy: Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society
Cover Interview of February 17, 2021
Lastly
Many have observed in 2020 that democracy is endangered,
largely by the lure and power of populist autocracy, which is ascendant
worldwide—even in the United States, the largest and oldest democracy. Early
internet evangelizers believed digital media would be a boon for democracy,
enabling different people from across society, even all over the world, to
communicate with one another, and build bridges. It did not work out this way:
online, people flock to their own kind; they do not want their worldview
challenged, but affirmed. They migrate to echo chambers, where they are
hardened in their views, and vilify the opposition. Thus, digital media have
made for greater political division and partisanship, especially in the United
States.
In 2011, during the Arab Spring, it looked like digital
media would be a wellspring of democratic revolution; now, autocratic regimes
have fully coopted said media. They have learned it is easy to isolate and
influence people online, confuse them and splinter them, and prevent popular
power from coalescing.
I hope Life After Privacy might make people aware of
the dangers and shortcomings of digital technology. We are wrongly urged to put
our hopes in protecting privacy, as if that were the way to salvage liberty and
democracy. But online privacy is worth little—it amounts to little political
power—even if it were possible to achieve, or preserve.
Democratic citizens must reach across the digital divide.
They must step outside their solipsistic digital bubbles, which give the
illusion of privacy and solitude, encourage all manner of asocial behavior, and
sunder communal ties. This is not to say we must abandon digital technology.
That is hardly possible—never more so than in the age of Covid-19, when we rely
on digital media to get anything done. Rather, the digital revolution must be
balanced by a return to the public square, where we convene and encounter one
another in non-transactional, non-commercial relationships, and see people in
their full complexity.
Democracy requires that citizens relearn the art of
politics, the art of conversing and deliberating with fully rounded peers, who
are respected and recognized. This is how we truly see one another in all our
nuances; this is where we construct bonds that overcome partisan divides,
enable us to live together in peace and security, and preserve and expand
freedom.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
Many have observed in 2020 that democracy is endangered, largely by the lure and power of populist autocracy, which is ascendant worldwide—even in the United States, the largest and oldest democracy. Early internet evangelizers believed digital media would be a boon for democracy, enabling different people from across society, even all over the world, to communicate with one another, and build bridges. It did not work out this way: online, people flock to their own kind; they do not want their worldview challenged, but affirmed. They migrate to echo chambers, where they are hardened in their views, and vilify the opposition. Thus, digital media have made for greater political division and partisanship, especially in the United States.
In 2011, during the Arab Spring, it looked like digital media would be a wellspring of democratic revolution; now, autocratic regimes have fully coopted said media. They have learned it is easy to isolate and influence people online, confuse them and splinter them, and prevent popular power from coalescing.
I hope Life After Privacy might make people aware of the dangers and shortcomings of digital technology. We are wrongly urged to put our hopes in protecting privacy, as if that were the way to salvage liberty and democracy. But online privacy is worth little—it amounts to little political power—even if it were possible to achieve, or preserve.
Democratic citizens must reach across the digital divide. They must step outside their solipsistic digital bubbles, which give the illusion of privacy and solitude, encourage all manner of asocial behavior, and sunder communal ties. This is not to say we must abandon digital technology. That is hardly possible—never more so than in the age of Covid-19, when we rely on digital media to get anything done. Rather, the digital revolution must be balanced by a return to the public square, where we convene and encounter one another in non-transactional, non-commercial relationships, and see people in their full complexity.
Democracy requires that citizens relearn the art of politics, the art of conversing and deliberating with fully rounded peers, who are respected and recognized. This is how we truly see one another in all our nuances; this is where we construct bonds that overcome partisan divides, enable us to live together in peace and security, and preserve and expand freedom.