LA&PS Professor Elisha Lim from the Department of Humanities has co-published a provocative manifesto to abandon privacy, which tackles digital discourse about online privacy through a humanities lens. “Abolish Privacy,” was published as the lead article of the February issue of Open Access journal First Mondays.
Professor Lim mentioned that “the aim of “Abolish Privacy” is to free up the massive amounts of research and funding going into internet privacy – which many scholars argue is elusive, unrealistic, improbable and we add, harmful at the social level, spreading paranoia anxiety and mutual mistrust at the expense of solidarity.” Instead, Professor Lim and team hope to re-direct research efforts towards open access, collective, collaborative data infrastructures and a concerted pushback against the corporate privatization of data.
Professor Lim has mentioned that they are a grateful recipient of York’s Strategic Research Appointments Cluster for Critical Data Studies Research Support. They would also like to acknowledge their Research Assistant Sim Zhi Ming (PhD candidate, York Political Science) for their immense skillful help as an RA to their overall research program.