On Storytelling, Privacy, Mythology, and the Jacobite Risings A Brief Essay about the History-Bending Power of Information

Abstract

An essay on the political power to be extracted from our seemingly valueless personal data, presented in the light of historical anecdotes such as the Jacobite Rising, the Battle of the Thermopylae, and early Roman Republic era Secessio Plebis.

Establishing storytelling and knowledge indexation as primary tools for human self-cognition, we seek to reevaluate even the smallest piece of personal data, as a properly ordered sequence of a multitude of data pieces can paint one individual's whole life story - enabling whomever detain such knowledge to discretely manipulate said individual.