Power, Privacy, and the Internet

The New York Review of Books
February 7, 2014

On October 30–31, 2013, The New York Review of Books held a conference, “Power, Privacy, and the Internet,” at Scandinavia House in New York City, with generous support from The Fritt Ord Foundation of Oslo, PEN America, Sarah and Landon Rowland, The Europaeum of Oxford, The Lead Bank of Kansas City, and the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.
Simon Head, director of programs for The New York Review of Books Foundation, addressed the theme of the conference:

The Internet is a transformative technology of our times and it is changing our lives as perhaps nothing else has done since the coming of the telephone, the telegraph, and the mass production automobile a century and more ago. Where the Internet surpasses these earlier technologies is in the speed with which its reach is expanding—in our contacts with one another through Twitter and Facebook, in what we read, hear, and buy; in our dealings with business, government, colleges and schools, and they in their dealings with us. Whether we like it or not we are caught up in these flows of technology and as we are carried along by the flows, some barely visible to us, it becomes increasingly difficult to stand back and distinguish between what is good about these innovations and what is not.

We are pleased to present the following recordings from the event. Listeners can also stream or download the audio from the Review’s account on Soundcloud

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