Words&Dirt

“In the end, he sought nothing less than to see the house exact its annihilating effects on his own being.  Again quoting directly from The Criteria: ‘Navidson has one deeply acquired organizing perception: there is no hope of survival there.  Life is impossible.  And therein lies the lesson of the house, spoken in syllables of absolute silence, resounding within him like a faint and uncertain echo…If we desire to live, we can only do so in the margins of that place.'”

––House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, pg. 387-8

“I am not arguing for people to abruptly go naked or to unilaterally forsake traditional forms of privacy.  Certainly transparency can only work if it happens in a manner that people call ‘fair.’  Whenever some outsider asserts a need to peer at you, it is only proper to demand: ‘First show me yours, before I show you mine!’  This holds doubly when the inquisitive party is some government official or agency.

What I am suggesting is that in the future, whenever we argue over how to deal with some vexing problem involving information and justice, we should at least consider how the second class of solutions might apply.  Reciprocal transparency solutions that involve pushing aside stuffy drapes rather than shutting them, opening a door instead of slamming it, and above all letting more air flow through, rather than less.”

––The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?, by David Brin, pg. 84