Every issue has one section dedicated to a particular question. Collecting responses from a range of perspectives, these symposia prompt us to think about the values and ideas that shape our most urgent cultural and personal decisions.
“Privacy seems to have become such a naturalized sacred right in the liberal imaginary that it no longer seems necessary to make a new positive case on its behalf ... Yet we need to know just what it is we love.”
Into the Cave
Like many women with countercultural affinities and too much education, when I got pregnant I began planning for a “natural,” i.e. drug-free, childbirth. Considering that…
The Social Network
Why, notwithstanding all the grave warnings, do informed people (more and more of them all the time) continue to join social networks and then to…
Private Lives
The right to supervision! The right to surveillance! It sounds sinister now, but it went without saying at the time that the Communists could not…
Being Known
Is there harm in being observed if I never find out about it and if my life is never affected in any observable way?
The Social Filter
In May, Facebook made a widely reported change to its default privacy settings for the site’s new users, setting the audience for posts to “friends”—those…
The Genetic Self
Your genes are your essential, true identity. If we accept that message, we permit a private company to deliver to us our selves. If we…
