The talks from MatrixConf 2024 are up!
Here’s mine, called “The Macroeconomics of Privacy and Dignity”.
I think it’s a good enough talk that I don’t mind saying “definitely watch it” but the core of my argument is that language is a tool that lets us see, and more importantly one that lets us help each other see. So if we find a hole in the language where the individual exists but the community doesn’t, where no language of collectivism exists – where the is only I, no we, no us – then we should sense immediately that this is a barrier to not just collective action, but to the idea that there even is such a thing as a collective, a society, a culture, an us possible in that space.
And when you see a barrier to collective action – particularly when it’s a gap in the language we use, in how we think – I believe you have a positive obligation to figure out why it’s there, who benefits from its absence, and what you’re going to do about it.
Our conversations around privacy are of that general shape – the cryptolibertarian focus on individualist privacy, the total absence of a vision of what a society of collective privacy might look like, of what that collective dignity makes possible. We need bigger tools than than the language allows us there, and urgently.
Also I genuinely love that I was introduced as “that guy over there”. I’m going to add that to my CV immediately: “Introduced at the 2024 Matrix Conference as ‘that guy over there’.” I’m going to put it right next to “co-recipient, Time Magazine person of the year award, 2007”.