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Comment by legohead | Hacker News Reader

We just don't have all the answers yet. We are at a strange era in human history. We have had privacy for eons, and now we may not. We can't even answer the question "do we need privacy?"

If you were raised with no privacy, you wouldn't know the difference. Imagine living your whole life with cameras on you. You know if something bad happens, you have video evidence. Now imagine all those cameras are taken away. You would probably feel very scared to the point of mania.

We don't have the answers yet. We are lucky the internet is still open, so we can try out all these new things and share ideas.

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If you were raised with no privacy, you may not be aware that it could get better, but you would still suffer from the power dynamic that the total lack of privacy creates. Information is power, and even if that power is distributed evenly (which it isn't now, and likely will never be), it changes things.

Privacy, as it exists today, is entirely a modern invention. For most of human history people lived in small groups where everyone knew everyone else very well. It was not until industrialisation that we had mega cities where no one knows anyone.

You are selecting facts that are convenient for you.

You are correct that small groups were often tightly knit. But you are ignoring the persistence of modern surveillance: Your neighbor or clan-mate never followed you everywhere. Since the invention of shelter you always had privacy in your home with your family. You could always have a confidential conversation with a friend.

All of those things are more difficult now than they were ten years ago, or hundreds of years ago, or thousands of years ago.

Furthermore, you never had a statistical profile built on your behavior, where members of your society could predict your movements and desires.

> For most of human history people lived in small groups where everyone knew everyone else very well.

Someone already mentioned issues with your statement, but I will add on another issue. Even when living in small, tight-knit communities, if you screwed up your social standing (for whatever reason), you had the option to leave the group, possibly to another group, without your entire life-history following you.

But this 'surveillance' was: 1) voluntary 2) symmetrical 3) done by humans with understanding and compassion

I don't think everyone knew everyone else very well in ancient cities like Rome, Athens and many others. Certainly more people historically lived in villages, but cities have been around for millenia and even in villages people were more intimate with their family than everyone else.

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