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The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us To Choose Between Privacy And Freedom? Paperback – June 1, 1999

4.2 out of 5 stars 53

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In New York and Baltimore, police cameras scan public areas twenty-four hours a day. Huge commercial databases track you finances and sell that information to anyone willing to pay. Host sites on the World Wide Web record every page you view, and “smart” toll roads know where you drive. Every day, new technology nibbles at our privacy.Does that make you nervous? David Brin is worried, but not just about privacy. He fears that society will overreact to these technologies by restricting the flow of information, frantically enforcing a reign of secrecy. Such measures, he warns, won't really preserve our privacy. Governments, the wealthy, criminals, and the techno-elite will still find ways to watch us. But we'll have fewer ways to watch them. We'll lose the key to a free society: accountability.The Transparent Society is a call for “reciprocal transparency.” If police cameras watch us, shouldn't we be able to watch police stations? If credit bureaus sell our data, shouldn't we know who buys it? Rather than cling to an illusion of anonymity-a historical anomaly, given our origins in close-knit villages-we should focus on guarding the most important forms of privacy and preserving mutual accountability. The biggest threat to our freedom, Brin warns, is that surveillance technology will be used by too few people, now by too many.A society of glass houses may seem too fragile. Fearing technology-aided crime, governments seek to restrict online anonymity; fearing technology-aided tyranny, citizens call for encrypting all data. Brins shows how, contrary to both approaches, windows offer us much better protection than walls; after all, the strongest deterrent against snooping has always been the fear of being spotted. Furthermore, Brin argues, Western culture now encourages eccentricity-we're programmed to rebel! That gives our society a natural protection against error and wrong-doing, like a body's immune system. But “social T-cells” need openness to spot trouble and get the word out. The Transparent Society is full of such provocative and far-reaching analysis.The inescapable rush of technology is forcing us to make new choices about how we want to live. This daring book reminds us that an open society is more robust and flexible than one where secrecy reigns. In an era of gnat-sized cameras, universal databases, and clothes-penetrating radar, it will be more vital than ever for us to be able to watch the watchers. With reciprocal transparency we can detect dangers early and expose wrong-doers. We can gauge the credibility of pundits and politicians. We can share technological advances and news. But all of these benefits depend on the free, two-way flow of information.

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author


David Brin has a Ph.D. in physics, but is best known for his science fiction. His books include the New York Times bestseller The Uplift War, Hugo Award-winner Startide Rising, and The Postman. He lives in Encinitas, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 0 edition (June 1, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0738201448
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0738201443
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
  • Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1370L
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.88 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.2 out of 5 stars 53

About the author

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David Brin
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David Brin is a scientist, public speaker and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards. At least a dozen have been translated into more than twenty languages.

David's latest novel - Existence - is set forty years ahead, in a near future when human survival seems to teeter along not just on one tightrope, but dozens, with as many hopeful trends and breakthroughs as dangers... a world we already see ahead. Only one day an astronaut snares a small, crystalline object from space. It appears to contain a message, even visitors within. Peeling back layer after layer of motives and secrets may offer opportunities, or deadly peril.

David's non-fiction book -- The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Freedom and Privacy? -- deals with secrecy in the modern world. It won the Freedom of Speech Award from the American Library Association.

A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his post-apocalyptic novel, The Postman. Brin's 1989 ecological thriller - Earth - foreshadowed global warming, cyberwarfare and near-future trends such as the World Wide Web. David's novel Kiln People has been called a book of ideas disguised as a fast-moving and fun noir detective story, set in a future when new technology enables people to physically be in more than two places at once. A hardcover graphic novel The Life Eaters explored alternate outcomes to WWII, winning nominations and high praise.

David's science fictional Uplift Universe explores a future when humans genetically engineer higher animals like dolphins to become equal members of our civilization. These include the award-winning Startide Rising, The Uplift War, Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shore and Heaven's Reach. He also recently tied up the loose ends left behind by the late Isaac Asimov: Foundation's Triumph brings to a grand finale Asimov's famed Foundation Universe.

Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction and philanthropy.

As a public speaker, Brin shares unique insights -- serious and humorous -- about ways that changing technology may affect our future lives. He appears frequently on TV, including several episodes of "The Universe" and History Channel's "Life After People." He also was a regular cast member on "The ArciTECHS."

Brin's scientific work covers an eclectic range of topics, from astronautics, astronomy, and optics to alternative dispute resolution and the role of neoteny in human evolution. His Ph.D in Physics from UCSD - the University of California at San Diego (the lab of nobelist Hannes Alfven) - followed a masters in optics and an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Caltech. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Space Institute. His technical patents directly confront some of the faults of old-fashioned screen-based interaction, aiming to improve the way human beings converse online.

Brin lives in San Diego County with his wife and three children.

You can follow David Brin:

Website: http://www.davidbrin.com/

Blog: http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/DavidBrin

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/cab801

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
53 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 1998
For perhaps two centuries people living in today's advanced industrial societies have had a modicum of privacy. Before two centuries ago, privacy was nearly unheard-of: you lived in a village where everyone knew everyone else and everyone else's business. Between two centuries ago and the present, people moved out of the village and out to a--relatively isolated--farm, or into a city where the sheer number of people made relative anonymity--and thus privacy--possible.
But, at least according to David Brin, the future will be different. In the future privacy as we know it today will be nearly impossible to attain.
In the future privacy will be next to nonexistent because of the explosion of audiovisual, communications, andcomputer technologies. Cheap hard disks will allow people to collect massive information about transactions: who did what. Cheap cameras will allow people to collect massive amounts of information about locations: who was where. Cheap computer power will allow the sorting and searching of massive amounts of information in search of those nuggets of data relevant to any one particular person. And cheap computers will allow anyone--or anyone with access codes--to access what will essentially become the stored life history of anyone.
From David Brin's perspective, this change is coming. The only question is who will have access to the information that will be contained in the great surveillance databases. Will the information be "secret" and "private"--in which case only governments which may turn thuggish will have access? Or will the information be "open" and "public"--in which case we will once again be back in the village, where nearly everything is done in public and everybody knows everybody else's business: truly a global village.
Brin makes a good case that the technology will bring us to one of these two outcomes. And he argues that the first outcome--in which we try to preserve our "privacy" by restricting access to the great surveillance databases--is a very dangerous outcome. It is a dangerous outcome because secret knowledge is power, and if the twentieth century has proven anything it is that governments cannot be trusted with secret knowledge. The great tyrannies of the twentieth century flourished because their surveillance gave them control and their secrecy kept enough citizens from realizing what they were up to fast enough. The advent of modern audiovisual, communications, and computing technologies greatly amplifies the power of surveillance, and greatly multiplies the danger if it is not countered by a greatly amplified power of the people to survey the government. And popular surveillance over the government carries as a side effect a potential loss of privacy. Anything that restricts popular access to information about other citizens restricts popular access to information about the government as well.
I believe that Brin's book is not necessarily an accurate forecast. The futures that he envisions will probably never come to pass. And the choice that he foresees may well never be posed in the stark form in which he poses it. Yet the book is useful: the future Brin envisions is clearly one of the possible futures that might come to pass, and the consequences of what he sees as the wrong choice in that possible future could turn the twenty-first century into an abattoir that would make the twentieth century look like a Sunday picnic.
If enough people read Brin's book, or are brushed by the currents of thought in represents, then it may turn into a self-negating prophecy: a warning of dystopia that by virtue of the horror it paints helps avoid that horror. That was the function of George Orwell's 1984.
That is an honorable role for anyone's book.
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Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2013
The author reports that the "central thesis of this book [is] that transparency is beneficial to all levels of society." The particular focus of the book is on the limits and constraints of privacy and its relationship to freedom, which has taken center stage as a social, political, and moral problem in the information age. As the role of technology in information dissemination and storage has increased, both the speed and availability of information has brought a sharper focus on questions of privacy and freedom. Brin presents a wide-ranging discussion of issues that impact an educated discussion of freedom and privacy. His primary assertion is that both freedom and privacy are best protected by the transparent flow of information. Brin believes that this assertion is counterintuitive for many people who seek to "protect privacy by erecting barriers to information flow." Much of the book is aimed at illustrating, through numerous historical and contemporary examples, how attempts to stop the flow of information (in the name of protecting privacy) inevitably lead to decreased liberty or less privacy, or both.
An important aspect of privacy, the author points out, is accountability. Accountability, he writes, "is the one fundamental ingredient on which liberty thrives." But, he points out, whenever a conflict arises between privacy and accountability, people demand privacy for themselves and accountability for everybody else. This is illustrated clearly by governments that seek to avoid accountability by reducing the flow of information about their activities. In response, corporations and citizens attempt to hide their activities and identities from the government, thereby seeking to enhance their privacy and reduce their accountability as well.
In his discussion, Brin--a physicist--cites numerous authorities from various disciplines to support his arguments. He points out, for example, that "if transparency is the requisite condition in science, democracy, and free markets, it should come as no surprise that many economists now lean toward attributing most kinds of injustice, bureaucracy, and societal inefficiency to asymmetric information flows--where one person or group knows something that others don't."
Brin identifies several sources of disagreement about the connections between privacy and freedom. For one thing, he points out, "we cannot count on jurists to define privacy for us, or legislators to supply realistic protections for it." As a result, he says, "those tasks will largely be our responsibility during the decades and generations to come." Another source of disagreement is the form of reasoning used by partisans (who he refers to as the "strong privacy movement") who employ chains of tautologies to defend their position or to attack their opposition (the same tool used by many politicians and political radio talk show hosts). As those who have studied logic will know, however, the formal validity of deductive reasoning does not guarantee the truth of its conclusions.
The only misgivings I have for the book are its length--his points could have been made more succinctly--and the fact that although he quotes numerous sources in the book, he does not provide adequate references for most of the quotes.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 27, 2016
Admitting I was already mulling the ideas in this book, when a friend told me, "There's a book you need to read." This book brought into focus for me a murky feeling that all this hype about privacy is possibly misguided and certainly unattainable. We, as a society, better come to grips that there will be no privacy for the average person. We need to take it very seriously to make transparency apply to the powerful, for they will certainly, secretly, apply transparency to the masses. I'm a 2nd amendment supporter (still am) but as of recent years I've started to debate with those in my echo chamber that freedom of information, transparency, from our powerful leaders is a more important problem in this age of big-data. If you live in China, the problem is already upon you: the government is using big data to shine the light of transparency on the masses, scoring them for loyalty and positive attitudes, dispensing good or bad careers based on your score (what you eat, where you take vacations, what you read, what you say in personal e-communications, who you associate with, medical history, etc. all adds up to a score that tells if you are a good or bad person from their selfish perspective). Big corporations in America are similar (and yes, the U.S. Govt. wants to get there, too, although they are a bit behind powers like big corporate America and the Chinese Govt., but they strive to catch up). This book doesn't try to villainize the powerful per se, rather it says they will always know things about us, which may be good, or bad, and as a free society we better enforce a reciprocal arrangement to know what they know and how and why they use our information.
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Top reviews from other countries

Teresa
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in Canada on January 25, 2016
Outdated but lots of great insight into our own minds.