Lowry Pressly | Privacy and the Power of Unknowing

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.

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