Lowry Pressly | Privacy and the Power of Unknowing | Stanford HAI
Stanford
University
  • Stanford Home
  • Maps & Directions
  • Search Stanford
  • Emergency Info
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy
  • Copyright
  • Trademarks
  • Non-Discrimination
  • Accessibility
© Stanford University.  Stanford, California 94305.
Skip to content
  • About

    • About
    • People
    • Get Involved with HAI
    • Support HAI
    • Subscribe to Email
  • Research

    • Research
    • Fellowship Programs
    • Grants
    • Student Affinity Groups
    • Centers & Labs
    • Research Publications
    • Research Partners
  • Education

    • Education
    • Executive and Professional Education
    • Government and Policymakers
    • K-12
    • Stanford Students
  • Policy

    • Policy
    • Policy Publications
    • Policymaker Education
    • Student Opportunities
  • AI Index

    • AI Index
    • AI Index Report
    • Global Vibrancy Tool
    • People
  • News
  • Events
  • Industry
  • Centers & Labs
Navigate
  • About
  • Events
  • AI Glossary
  • Careers
  • Search
Participate
  • Get Involved
  • Support HAI
  • Contact Us

Stay Up To Date

Get the latest news, advances in research, policy work, and education program updates from HAI in your inbox weekly.

Sign Up For Latest News

Your browser does not support the video tag.
eventSeminar

Lowry Pressly | Privacy and the Power of Unknowing

Status
Past
Date
Wednesday, April 09, 2025 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM PST/PDT
Location
Gates Computer Science Building, Room 119 353 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305
Topics
Privacy, Safety, Security

In an era when information is treated as a form of power and self-knowledge an unqualified good, the value of what remains unknown is often overlooked.

Share
Link copied to clipboard!
Event Contact
Annie Benisch
abenisch@stanford.edu
2099183302

Related Events

NVIDIA & Marlowe: Scaling Data Science Workloads with RAPIDS
WorkshopJul 15, 20262:00 PM - 3:30 PM
July
15
2026

This workshop will cover how NVIDIA RAPIDS offers a seamless experience to enable GPU-acceleration for many existing data science tasks with zero code changes. You will learn how to use GPU-accelerated tools to conduct data science faster, leading to more scalable, reliable, and cost-effective results!

Event

NVIDIA & Marlowe: Scaling Data Science Workloads with RAPIDS

Jul 15, 20262:00 PM - 3:30 PM

This workshop will cover how NVIDIA RAPIDS offers a seamless experience to enable GPU-acceleration for many existing data science tasks with zero code changes. You will learn how to use GPU-accelerated tools to conduct data science faster, leading to more scalable, reliable, and cost-effective results!

From fitness trackers to social media, contemporary technologies encourage individuals to quantify, reveal, and optimize their lives—yet this relentless pursuit of knowledge comes at a cost. In his talk, Lowry Pressly will explore the ethical and political stakes of an often-neglected dimension of human life: oblivion. Drawing from his book, The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life, which was recently named one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker, Pressly argues that we misunderstand privacy if we assume that its value has to do with data protection or the control of personal information. Rather, privacy’s vital importance in our lives stems from its role in protecting—but also producing—oblivion’s unique form of unknowing that is essential to trust, depth, and human flourishing. By rethinking privacy beyond the framework of data protection, Pressly challenges us to reclaim the social, psychological, and political importance of limits to knowledge—and to better appreciate the power of the unknown to sustain the human world as a meaningful and livable space.

Speaker
Lowry Pressly
Lecturer, Political Science and McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society Honors Program Advisor

Watch Event Recording