Is nothing private anymore?

The private sphere provides a space for self-exploration and reflection – for organisations as well as individuals – and intimate relationships certainly require privacy. Yet the line between private and public has become ever more fuzzy. Are comments made to ‘friends’ on Facebook public pronouncements or private mutterings? In this riveting debate, filmed at the Battle of Ideas festival, an extraordinary line-up of luminaries help us understand what’s going on. Professor Frank Furedi explains that the destruction of the private sphere leads to the implosion of the public sphere. We know how to deal with the old forms of state interference and surveillance, he argues, but if it involves the private sphere, especially children ‘we roll over’. Everything in the public sphere is then blamed on the private, as David Cameron illustrates with his ‘dysfunctional families’ apparently causing every social ill.