These chips are just one example of the enormous and radical techno-
logical developments of recent years. The developments have led to com-
pletely new technologies for obtaining information about people, observing
them, listening to their conversations, and monitoring their activities:
technologies that invade people’s privacy in new ways and pose new threats
to this privacy. There are also social changes of an entirely diVerent sort
that have shifted the boundary separating the private and the public realms
and led to changes in their social signiWcance. These include the fact that
women can no longer be assigned to the realm of domestic and family
labour, but are increasingly playing—and wanting to play—an equal role in
gainful employment and the public sphere. They include the fact that
intimacy and sexuality are no longer banished to the private domain, but
are openly portrayed and displayed in magazines and periodicals, on
television, and in the whole range of media. They also include the emer-
gence of a new genre of television programs in which the ‘‘private life’’ of
the contestants can be observed on an almost one-to-one basis, as in reality
TV shows likeBig Brother.
Recent interest in reconceptualizing privacy therefore reXects three histor-
ical processes: developments in information technologies, capable of threat-
ening the protection of personal privacy in completely new ways; radical
changes in the relation between the sexes and a concomitant reconWguration
of the private sphere; and the intrusion of intimacy into the public realm
through previously private themes that have turned public, and shifts in
notions of individuality and authenticity. These examples also suggest that
there is notonehistory of privacy, and that what counts as ‘‘private’’ at any
particular time varies (Arie`s and Duby 1987 ; Elshtain 1981 ; Moore 1984 ; Benn
and Gaus 1983 ; Westin 1967 ,8V; Weintraub and Kumar 1997 ). They bring to
light the thoroughly conventional nature of the separation between public
and private life.
In what follows, I look brieXy at some of the older theories of privacy and
more speciWcally at why these are becoming obsolete. This makes it easier to
see what is new about new theories. In a second step, I look more closely at
new conceptions of the term. This overview is then followed by a systematic
account of the problem as a whole in which I diVerentiate three dimensions of
privacy. Finally, I provide a brief sketch of the normative problems associated
with privacy.
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