Greg Ferenstein summarizes the birth and death of privacy over the last 3,000 years:
Cerf suffered a torrent of criticism in the media for suggesting that privacy is unnatural. Though he was simply opining on what he believed was an under-the-radar gathering at the Federal Trade Commission in 2013, historically speaking, Cerf is right.
Privacy, as it is conventionally understood, is only about 150 years old. Most humans living throughout history had little concept of privacy in their tiny communities. Sex, breastfeeding, and bathing were shamelessly performed in front of friends and family.
The lesson from 3,000 years of history is that privacy has almost always been a back-burner priority. Humans invariably choose money, prestige or convenience when it has conflicted with a desire for solitude.
The silent reading thing is a load of hooey, as are a couple of the specifics in the other sections. In general, though, it is correct that most people in the past made due with far less privacy than has been common in recent times.
However, there’s no normative content to that fact. Most people in the past were also destitute serfs, by our modern standards. If our society took a turn for destitute serfdom then we would rightly be alarmed, even though it’s historically typical.
“This portends a future where most people will increasingly choose ever more invasive tracking”
When data mining is baked into most consumer software, data retention in one form or another is mandated by law and everything is tied into the borg cloud, there is no choice to be made.