Privacy Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/tag/privacy/ a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship Sat, 17 Jan 2026 02:23:22 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://www.publicbooks.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/cropped-favicon-2-300x300.png Privacy Archives - Public Books https://www.publicbooks.org/tag/privacy/ 32 32 Weeding Our Algorithmic Gardens https://www.publicbooks.org/weeding-our-algorithmic-gardens/ Tue, 07 Aug 2018 15:00:14 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/?p=23006 I’m usually not very worried about robots taking over the world. Skynet makes for entertaining science fiction, but the artificial intelligences we have now don’t ...

The post Weeding Our Algorithmic Gardens appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Privacy Cultures https://www.publicbooks.org/privacy-cultures/ Wed, 25 Jul 2018 15:00:42 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/?p=22676 In “USS Callister,” a much-discussed episode of Black Mirror, a reticent computer programmer collects DNA around his office from discarded objects like lollipops and coffee cups. He uses that DNA to ...

The post Privacy Cultures appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Clever Man Outs Female Author: A Drama in 3 Acts https://www.publicbooks.org/clever-man-outs-female-author-a-drama-in-3-acts/ Tue, 11 Oct 2016 05:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/clever-man-outs-female-author-a-drama-in-3-acts/ This month, we witnessed a contemporary version of a drama that we might call “The Female Author’s Disclosure.” It features the following dramatis personae:   • The Heroine: a female author who decides to publish under an incognito. • The Confidantes: friends or associates who know her real identity, and are begged to maintain the […]

The post Clever Man Outs Female Author: A Drama in 3 Acts appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Drone Poems https://www.publicbooks.org/drone-poems/ Sun, 15 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/drone-poems/ The protests of Hong Kong’s 2014 “Umbrella Revolution” were marked in early days by the intermittent appearance of a helicopter drone flying high above the crowds, looking rather like a pizza box with propellers. I heard a moment’s nervous murmuring from the crowd each time it went up. But the drone’s LEDs were swirling red […]

The post Drone Poems appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Miserable Ways to Make Money: An Interview with Jake Halpern https://www.publicbooks.org/miserable-ways-to-make-money-an-interview-with-jake-halpern/ Sun, 15 Mar 2015 05:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/miserable-ways-to-make-money-an-interview-with-jake-halpern/ “Banks are not the good guys in this scenario. The banks are squeezing as much as they can out of people.”

The post Miserable Ways to Make Money: An Interview with Jake Halpern appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Terms of Service https://www.publicbooks.org/terms-of-service/ Sat, 01 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/terms-of-service/ In a comprehensive survey of how technological advances will “creep” into everyday life, computer expert and technologist Thomas Keenan guides the reader through a slew of increasingly ubiquitous and invasive technologies. How do fellow citizens feel about the prospect of airport security spraying you with “a fine mist” of GPS nanoparticles in the name of […]

The post Terms of Service appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Writing Technology https://www.publicbooks.org/writing-technology/ Wed, 01 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/writing-technology/ Read my blog, please, but don’t dare peek into my diary. Even though these two genres employ some of the same conventions—a diurnal relation to time, a preoccupation with subjective experience—one is a product of social media, while the other is not meant to be read by others. Donald Winnicott, the influential British psychoanalyst of […]

The post Writing Technology appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Pynchon’s Children https://www.publicbooks.org/pynchons-children/ Tue, 01 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/pynchons-children/ The work of Thomas Pynchon has long been synonymous with literary postmodernism, especially the version that involves manic overplotting and paranoid speculation about sinister systems whose names elude us. He has also always been understood to be broadly “countercultural” in some ’60s sense, championing the little guy against those sinister forces. While these characterizations are […]

The post Pynchon’s Children appeared first on Public Books.

]]> Can Drones Have Ethics? https://www.publicbooks.org/can-drones-have-ethics/ Tue, 01 Jul 2014 05:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/can-drones-have-ethics/ In this interview, Claire Richard and media studies professor Peter Asaro discuss the history of drone warfare and the troubling proliferation of new technologies that can surveil and kill from a distance. While we’re plenty familiar with drones thanks to the War on Terror, Asaro details the strategic rationale behind their use, along with the […]

The post Can Drones Have Ethics? appeared first on Public Books.

]]> The History of Secrets https://www.publicbooks.org/the-history-of-secrets/ Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.publicbooks.org/the-history-of-secrets/ Family Secrets by Deborah Cohen injects the marrow back into two centuries of skeletons locked away in household closets. A leading historian of modern Britain and Europe, Cohen has put together a rollicking read through the hidden land of cultural morality and its fundamental institution, the family. A son who prefers lipstick to lip balm […]

The post The History of Secrets appeared first on Public Books.

]]>