I spent a while last weekend thinking about death and privacy—for no particular reason aside from taking notice of a couple books I own:
- The Adams Jefferson Letters
- Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg: The Letters
- Rub Out the Words: The Letters of William S. Burroughs
There are countless collections of correspondence floating around from a time when an envelope was considered a form of privacy. In many cases privacy died with the individual. Today we converse within systems where death has no effect on privacy and this seems very unfortunate. We’ve created an environment where insight is forever locked-up.