Praise for Richard E. Miller’s On the End of Privacy:
“This brilliant book asks profoundly disturbing questions. How might we read and write, think and live when never-disappearing textual selves circulate wildly? How might we teach and learn when screens—and their embodied , half-truths, and malevolences—are utterly ubiquitous, endlessly connectable? Miller lucidly stories his way toward answers, braiding narratives that enact as provocatively as they evoke.”
—Doug Hesse, The University of Denver
In 2010, Miller made two commitments: to write and publish only online and to write and publish only about information that was freely available online to all. He was motivated by his sense that he couldn’t continue to teach writing if he himself didn’t know how to write and publish using the most powerful means for expression ever invented. What he found online shocked, amazed, depressed, inspired, and troubled him. Privacy, as defined in the paper-based world, no longer exists in the screen-centric world. On the End of Privacy offers Miller’s reflections on what this means for our collective future.
On the End of Privacy explores how literacy is transformed by online technology that lets us instantly publish anything that we can see or hear. Miller examines the 2010 suicide of Tyler Clementi, a young college student who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after he discovered that his roommate spied on him via . With access to the text messages, tweets, and chatroom posts of those directly involved in this tragedy, Miller asks: Why did no one intervene to stop the spying? Searching for an answer to that question leads Miller to online porn sites, the invention of Facebook, the court-martial of Chelsea Manning, the contents of Hillary Clinton’s email server, Anthony Weiner’s sexted images, Chatroulette, and more as he maps out the changing norms governing privacy in the digital age.