Kieron O'Hara | Writer and philosopher

Welcome

Hi, thanks for dropping in.

I’m Kieron O’Hara, a writer and commentator on matters techy and philosophical. For 30 years I was an academic in the UK, first at the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham, and then in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, from which I retired and am currently an emeritus fellow.

I’m putting this site together to act as my online presence, and am gradually adding books and articles whenever I get a spare minute. Which, given that I am retired, is surprisingly rarely.

I’m enjoying writing all those books and articles I never had time to do when I was gainfully employed. I’m interested in the way that technology, and particularly AI and the World Wide Web, affects our lives, our politics and our economies. I’ve tended to specialise in issues to do with trust and privacy. The philosophical side is expressed through an interest in the philosophy of conservatism, especially that of Burke and Oakeshott.

The two topics seem very different, until you pose the question whether the incredible progress characteristic of today’s connected world renders the very idea of preserving present institutions and practices impossible, or alternatively whether it will take a rich appreciation of our past to enable us to innovate rapidly without alienation.

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Sample Chapter Available

Blockchain Politics

Ideology and the Crisis in Social Trust

Likening contemporary extremes of far-right populism and identity politics to 17th century Peasants and Puritans, Blockchain Politics examines the enduring importance of trust in political life. Kieron O’Hara develops a new theory of trust to analyse how these extremes undermine social accord and weaken representative democracy, and to suggest remedies.

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Now in Paperback

The Seven Veils of Privacy

How Our Debates About Privacy Conceal Its Nature

In this book, Kieron O’Hara reveals that much of the conflict around privacy results from taking different perspectives that veil key assumptions and disguise points of agreement. Focusing on the seven most important of these perspectives, he offers a framework for negotiating this important but complex topic.

Expertly blending insights from philosophy, history, sociology, law, computing and politics, and with plenty of real-world examples, O’Hara’s The Seven Veils of Privacy is both an ideal introduction to the field, and a challenging critique of it.

The Seven Veils of Privacy: How our Debates about Privacy Conceal its Nature is a highly informative book for readers who want to understand privacy through its value, definition, usage and context. Readers will get a stronger sense of what privacy is – and what it is not – by reflecting on the context of the topic, ranging from the personal level to societal realms. Kieron O’Hara sets out to solve the problem of defining privacy by examining its historical and various cultural understandings.

Kat Fuller, The Sociological Review

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Four Internets

Data, Geopolitics, and the Governance of Cyberspace

Four Internets offers a revelatory new approach for conceptualizing the Internet and understanding the sometimes rival values that drive its governance and stability. It contends that the apparently monolithic “Internet” is in fact maintained by four distinct value systems—the Silicon Valley Open Internet, the Brussels Bourgeois Internet, the DC Commercial Internet, and the Beijing Paternal Internet—competing to determine the future directions of internet affordances for freedom, innovation, security, and human rights.

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Conservatism

The real meaning of ‘conservative’ – today denoting groups as diverse and incompatible as the religious right, libertarian free-marketeers and free-spending neo-conservatives – has been lost to politics. Yet the original conservative ideology, first developed in the eighteenth century by Edmund Burke, was concerned with managing change. Kieron O’Hara argues that genuine conservatism has its own relevance in a complex and dynamic world where change is rapid, pervasive and dislocating. Conservatism transcends traditional politics, and has surprising applications – not least as the most appropriate and practical response to climate change.