It seems fairly standard to argue that the right to privacy is fundamental to a safe and productive society. But what if I told you, at this point in time, I disagree with this assertion. This site is a place to argue for and experiment with radical transparency.

Viewfoil is a synonym for what most of us remember from school as the transparencies used on an overhead projector. I’ve named this site Viewfoil because my goal is to transparently display my life, self, and ideas.

I have a hypothesis that the world is actually going to get a lot better once we move to a culture of radical transparency. I could be wrong, and I welcome argument on this controversial position. However, as I see it, I think that the evils of privacy far outweigh the good that would come from creating a world of transparency.

In this blog, I’ll try to argue that the benefits of privacy are largely an illusion at this point, and that propping up a culture of privacy is mostly of benefit to people in power who can hide behind their personal privacy to continue exploiting the world without detection.

Again, there is a lot to unpack here, and I’m going to need to take my time. But I think it’s important to create a space where I can voice this idea, and (maybe more importantly) to show by example how I can grow these ideas publicly, piece by piece, as they comes to me. Therefore, I’m starting this site to do two things at once:

• Argue for a cultural devaluing of privacy
• Set an example by making my private life as public as possible

Welcome to the start of this crazy idea. I’m excited to see how much we can uncover.

Thanks, Will Stedden

viewfoil

PS: For more info, check out my longer technical post.

Testing webmentions between bonkerfield and viewfoil