We live in an era of increasing surveillance and intrusions into our privacy, as a result both of government actions and online technology monopolies that make money from social media platforms, search engines and retailing. Many of us gladly hand over our data to these firms in order to use their services because they offer unprecedented convenience. Do we then have a right to bemoan the loss of our privacy? Should we take a stand and boycott these services? Does only fiction now have the power to make us see what these technology giants have done to our autonomy?
Dave Eggers is an American novelist and journalist. His books, include The Circle, The Monk of Mokha, A Hologram for the King, and What Is the What, winner of France’s Prix Médicis Etranger.
More InfoMalavika Jayaram is the inaugural executive director of Digital Asia Hub, a Hong Kong-based independent research think-tank incubated by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, where she is also a faculty associate.
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