David Vincent > Quotes

“Our language has wisely sensed those two sides of man’s being alone,’ wrote Paul Tillich. ‘It has created the word “loneliness” to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word “solitude” to express the glory of being alone.’ The most succinct definition of loneliness is failed solitude.”
― David Vincent, A History of Solitude

“Since the 1970s, there has been a continual tendency to over-estimate the surveillance capacities of new technologies. In the sense of the physical invasion of privacy, surveillance comprises five sequential events: the capacity to observe; the act of observation; comprehension of what is seen; intervention on the basis of that knowledge; and a consequent change of behaviour by the subject. Too often the final four have been assumed from the possibility of the first.”
― David Vincent, Privacy: A Short History