The Ideal of Transparency in the Digital Era

Today we live in an era of transparency, made possible by digital technology and the ideal of transparency. To understand the origins of this ideal, we must first look at the concept of transparency. The notion of transparency, which originally derives from optics, has evolved from being a property of the material through which we can see to being a thing that we can see. In this way, the term also acquires its metaphorical use and begins to denote a quality of sincere people. Transparency as an epistemological and moral value is thus extended to many areas and becomes a general and principled requirement of modern society, and as such it becomes an ideal. The modern demand for transparency of everything interferes in an important way with the possibility of genuine interpersonal relations and the possibility of establishing ethics itself. If the digital age demands transparency of everything, perhaps it is time to demand transparency of transparency as well.