Trends, Discovery, and People in the Digital Age

Foreword: the paradox of a commonplace revolution

Martin Hall

An overarching paradox of our contemporary world is this. The transition in the use, and abuse, of digital information is so comprehensive and profound that it is largely taken as commonplace. We take for granted that we can carry a terabyte or two of data in our pockets and find out where we are, almost anywhere in the world, from a cheap phone. We seem largely unconcerned that we may be photographed by hidden cameras a dozen times a day and that we can be tracked by digital face recognition. We expect to be able to find anything we want, from anywhere in the world, on the Internet, and we become impatient if access takes more than a minute. And yet for any adult alive today, ...