On the End of Privacy: Dissolving Boundaries in a Screen-Centric World

by Richard E. Miller

Overview

In preparation for this book, and to better understand our screen-based, digital world, Miller only accessed information online for seven years.
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 webcam. 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.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822965688
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/12/2019
Series:	Composition, Literacy, and Culture Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Richard E. Miller is a professor in the English Department at Rutgers University.
 

Table of Contents

Preface Goodbye to All That xi

Acknowledgments xvii

Chapter 1 On Chance, Distraction., and the Prepared Mind 3

Chapter 2 On the Persistence of the Digital Past 19

Chapter 3 On Willful Ignorance 40

Chapter 4 On the Private Pleasures of Looking 57

Chapter 5 On Getting Caught in the Act 74

Chapter 6 On the Mundanity of Cruelty 94

Chapter 7 On Virtual Communities and Embodied Realities 110

Chapter 8 On Viewing Parties 128

Chapter 9 On Suicide 148

Chapter 10 On Bullies, Bullying, and Fault-Finding 170

Chapter 11 On Guilt 189

Chapter 12 On Meaningfulness 215

Coda On Already Out-of-Date Updates 235

Bibliography by Chapter 239

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

“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 knowledges, half-truths, and malevolencies—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
 


"Miller uncovers what it means to be living in a world where anyone can hide behind a screen but anything, once written on a screen, can't be hidden."
—Charlee Dyroff, Columbia Journal

From the Publisher