David Anderson
Facebook Knows Your Thoughts
Freedom to Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds
By Susie Alegre
Atlantic Books 376pp £20 order from our bookshop
Whether tracking prey, scoping a deal, scouting a romantic partner or raising our young, humans have always sought to deduce and then to influence the thinking of those about us. We often succeed, sometimes on a large scale: the results of such influence have included cults, theocracies and totalitarian propaganda, as well as populations responsive to benevolent peer pressure and the pro-social messages of nudge units. Most of us crave the approval of others and are therefore quite willing, whether we admit it or not, to allow their opinions to shape and inform our own.
At the same time, we value the right to be let alone – described by the American lawyers Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis, in their seminal 1890 article ‘The Right to Privacy’, as the ‘most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men’. A mental core impenetrable to others allows us to experiment with ideas, to dream, think and create in freedom. It enables, in the philosopher Thomas Nagel’s phrase, the ‘sheer chaotic, tropical luxuriance of the inner life’ to flourish.
The protection of that inner core is the subject of this engaging and thought-provoking book by the barrister and human rights expert Susie Alegre. Her two major themes are the unprecedented nature of the threat to our inner lives that is posed by modern digital technologies, and the need
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'This is entertainment of the highest class.'
@NJCooper_crime reviews new thrillers by Mick Herron, Kassandra Montag, @LVaughanwrites, @AuthorSJBolton, @ajaychow, @tombradby, @SaraParetsky, @writejemmawayne & @GillianMAuthor.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/may-2022-crime-round-up
'The day Simon and I Vespa-d from Daunt to Daunt to John Sandoe to Hatchards to Goldsboro, places where many of the booksellers have become my friends over the years, was the one with the high puffy clouds, the very strong breeze, the cool-warm sunlight.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/temple-of-vespa
Some salient thoughts on book collecting from Michael Dirda with a semi tragic conclusion that I suspect many of us can relate to from the @Lit_Review #WednesdayMotivation