On the End of Privacy

Dissolving Boundaries in a Screen-Centric World

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

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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.

304 Pages, 6 x 9 in.

February, 2019

isbn : 9780822965688

about the author

Richard E. Miller

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

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Richard E. Miller