Privacy

From monastic cells to browser windows, urban planning to biotech labs, our notions of and norms around private and public are in flux. This issue of Comment takes many of our inherited assumptions about privacy—both its sanctity and its perils—and examines them anew. How do the boundaries between public and private blur? What happens when privacy becomes less about preserving what’s sacred and more about excluding others? When does our desire to be seen pose a greater threat to privacy than external surveillance? As these questions, and the answers explored by our authors, show, privacy is not just a matter of what we choose to reveal or conceal, but how we understand ourselves as persons formed by—and forming—today’s public and private spheres.