“Murderers and adulterers want privacy,” he warned English preachers in the 17th century. This reminds us that privacy was once seen with deep suspicion.
Privacy has historically been rare and often guilty. Classical language registers that doubt: in ancient Greece, public life overturns private life, and the Latin word “privacy” implies a loss of status and citizen exclusion. Withdrawal from Police– Small and autonomous Greek city-states – or from res publicathe collective “public events” of Rome were less like freedom than the terrible hideout.
Only in the 16th and 17th centuries were reformers beginning to defend personal autonomy, religious choices and private property. Protestant reforms deepened that change and challenged the grip of the church and nation to individual consciences.
By the 19th century, surveillance critics began to push back. Legal thinkers have called for “the right to communicate, of course,” and warned that new technology (telegraphy and cameras) are threatening the value that is considered increasingly essential.
The threat today feels even greater. Social media and AI often harvest and monetize data without consent. Results: The gap between reduced control of personal information, increased risk of identity theft and discrimination, and the promise of privacy and data-driven innovation is widening.
Andrew Nicole’s movies Anon (2018) Danger is adapted into a drama. Its brutal cityscape imagines a near future where all memories are recorded and searchable by the authorities. Crime Plummet – Prices for personal freedom. The protagonist claims that the only “attack” remains in her mind.
That premise is no longer overstated. AI-driven tracking and facial recognition are already comparable to on-screen. Full deployment is primarily a policy issue.
But deeper confusion is cultural. We cling to the myth of loneliness. “We treat art as Nihiro’s creation, calling only artificial intelligence derivatives. This misunderstands creativity and agency. Human learning is imitation. Language, rhythm and moral judgment all arise from copying, adjusting and passing ideas.
Privacy is not the same as reliability or originality. It can create space for creative work, but it does not guarantee that the results will be new or true.
The question is not whether imitation occurs, but how borrowed elements are reshaped into meaningful things. Artificial objects are not a threat to our humanity, and that is part of it. The challenge is not to maintain the myth of pure invention, but to keep it generous, honest and alive.
Think of your father preparing toast for your wedding. This is a moment of vulnerability. The temptation to seduce AI to write it is real. A machine can generate something in seconds. Risk is not abstract injustice, it is distance. He exchanges expression efforts and anxiety for the smoothness of the script.
What is lost is not just originality, but the meaning that comes from working at the moment is from trembling voices and incomplete phrases that reveal connections. The danger is self-rot. It is a progressive atrophy of the ability to act, judge, and engage.
Agency has always been mediated by language, tools, institutions and traditions. The problem is not mediation, not structure. Whether our tools invite skills and improvisation or passive us.
When privacy is eroded, creative reworking is also eroded. Relevance and candid speech rely on spaces protected from constant scrutiny. Public opinion is divided into what people think and what they dare say.
Artistic freedom faces similar tensions. Poet Dean Young calls art “hunger, rebellion, tantrums, sadness, hoaxes.” Jack Elle, Indiana Technology Societyreminds us that we need machines. The danger lies in our choice of “purpose and outcome.” Freedom is “a dynamic… win over and over again, not static,” he writes.
The award currently relies on source, consent and compensation rules. The same tools that promote creativity can also strip creators and agencies community if checked.
As today’s originality combines the tools and insights that we already have at hand, but privacy will give us an answer. Art is by no means Nihiro. It thrives by reshaping what exists and shaking the familiar awakening. (Postmodern originality: when Simulacrum blushes.)
The question is not whether tools shape us, but whether they shape them. The crisis of modernity is in allowing reason and science to rule rather than answer human judgments, leaving room for improvisation and true existence.
Notes and reading
Rene Magritt (1898-1967) – Painting, Empire of Light. – “Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see.” – life (2021).
Dean Young,poets, Reckless art (2010): “Art is the act of making choices in a recharged field.”
>I am grateful to the poet, nie. Sarah GreenHe introduced me to Young. Sarah is the author of the April 2025 release. delete (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Award), and previous collections; Earth Science. Her poem appeared Plowshares, Paris Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, Field, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, Pleiadesand elsewhere. The two-time Push Cart Award recipient is an associate professor of English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.
“there is nothing” teeth I’m alive.
Space blanks are recharged fields. The emptiness sings– Harmony that supports reality. – Otto von Guericke (German Scientists and Politicians, 1654), cited in “The Surprising Vacuum of Being”, Nautilus (January 4, 2023).
Intimate with strangers: Ascending and descent in private life – Tiffany Jenkins (2025). Jenkins is a cultural historian. Guardian, observer, Financial Times, Scottishand audience.
Influence anxiety – Harold Bloom (1973). “Originality” is not Nihiro’s invention, but rather a creative misconception of what came before. The same dynamics govern how we create our lives in an age where we cling to authenticity.
Honesty and credibility – Lionel Triling (1972). Being “real” has become a moral and aesthetic mandate that underpins modern concepts of self and originality.
Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI -Marcus du Sautoy (2019). Oxford mathematician Du Sautoy distinguishes that. Rule base Imitation and Authentic innovation.
Alignment problems: Machine learning and human values – Brian Christian (2020). AI has no intention of ending the world. The problem is how to “align” human values ​​and machine behavior, a hardly solved challenge we have tried since the invention of cotton gin.
“Nostalgia for the future” – Lauren Euler (Harper’s magazine, (April 2022). How nostalgia for authenticity can determine new tools. Why the total connection promise threatens the real agent. (Oyler reads Jennifer Egan’s speculative memory sharing technology and frames these themes Candy House. )
lastly – “AI, Mars, the immortal original high-tech right power player.” Critically balanced look Peter Tiel. I share the inspiring concerns that many people raise, but Thiel’s influence on AI is not too important. New York Times Newly released Ross Doutat Transcribed interviewtreating him with partisan respect and covering the entire shooting match.
Tip #214 – God’s Comedy, the gloomy prophet
Tip #213 – written in stone: broken at birth
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
