Book contents
- Life after Privacy
- Life after Privacy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Confessional Culture
- 2 Defending Privacy
- 3 Big Plans for Big Data
- 4 The Surveillance Economy
- 5 Privacy Past and Present
- 6 The Borderless, Vanishing Self
- 7 Autonomy and Political Freedom
- 8 Powerful Publics
- Conclusion
- Index
4 - The Surveillance Economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2020
- Life after Privacy
- Life after Privacy
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Confessional Culture
- 2 Defending Privacy
- 3 Big Plans for Big Data
- 4 The Surveillance Economy
- 5 Privacy Past and Present
- 6 The Borderless, Vanishing Self
- 7 Autonomy and Political Freedom
- 8 Powerful Publics
- Conclusion
- Index
Summary
In the face of rapid technological changes transforming our lives in profound ways, the forecast for privacy looks dark. Its demise is hastened by “an unstoppable arms race in communication tools and data mining capabilities, which in turn are both due to the continued progression of Moore’s Law. The cost of keeping secrets increases inversely to decreases in the cost of computing.”1 Roughly, Moore’s Law holds that computing power will grow exponentially; digital devices will become faster and more powerful in rapid succession. Where technological changes may have once developed gradually, that is precisely not the case as in the digital age, where breakneck speed of change is the rule. And digital technology will become cheaper, more accessible, and broadly distributed in the process. Taken together, this means that the cost and hassle of protecting privacy grows exponentially, too. In the digital net that envelops our everyday lives, it will become increasingly more difficult and rare to perform any task without revealing ourselves, and opening our lives to spying eyes. And our spies are not content to watch us from without; they will install sentinels in our very bodies, and monitor us from within.
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- Life after PrivacyReclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society, pp. 58 - 74Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020