This anonymity is pretty recent, though - on some levels only since WW2 and arguable that anonymity was very limited for a long time before. Try moving around France in the 30s with no papers.
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Those are very different set ups though. We’re not simply going back to the way things were at all. Village lack of privacy was bounded by lifelong reciprocality, and the early modern state by inefficiency and error. Global village isn’t a village. This is starkly different.
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I think your original point is valid and this is an important historic transition with great implications. The correct reaction to the invention of nuclear fission isn’t pointing out we always had aggression and used flint arrows during the Pleistocene.
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True enough, but it would be equally unhelpful to say war is new. When we’re trying to work out what we think about something new, it’s worth working out what parts really are new, and how we reacted to comparable changes in the past (cf ‘databases destroy freedom’ in the 70s)
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Replying to @benedictevans @zeynep and
I think another angle to pursue is how far we’re uncomfortable because the new thing is somehow an automated version of something we were previously comfortable with - doing it *at scale* is the problem. That’s why face recognition is different to wanted posters.
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I agree. “This is all new” is the wrong tack to take. We’re operating through very old and very human impulses and social dynamics. But the tools and their efficacy has dramatically changed, and that’s the issue. For example, losing practical obscurity is a big deal.
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Indeed. If I may quote my book (ahha, the only good reason to write a book probably): "technology rarely generates absolutely novel human behavior; rather, it changes the terrain on which such behavior takes place."pic.twitter.com/0SeZew42Qu
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