> It was possible to escape that domain by travel, either temporarily or permanently, as little as 10-20 miles might suffice.[2] As late as the 19th century in the United States, it was possible for a well-connected and politically connected man to lead a double life.[3]

Yes, but I would argue if you go farther back, to the era I'm talking about, there would rarely be any other group close enough to make this feasible. When it takes days to reach the next group of people, if you even know where they are, it's a bit harder to pull this off. At the same time, if you're traveling back and forth between locations commonly, I imagine others would too, and information would eventually get out.

I'm referring to pre-history, you keep bring up examples form a few hundred years ago. I would argue there' a fundamental difference in how societies functioned in pre-history, where we have tribal groups, and the historical record, which is largely after people have started congregating into larger societies. You are bounding your examples with "as late as the 19th century", when really that's the wrong end of the temporal spectrum to be talking about. That statement implies that it was always possible prior to that. Do you believe that it makes sense in the context I'm referring to?

> You assert, without proof or evidence, that there is no difference between digital information stored across servers, and the disaggregated wetware knowledge of your immediate associates. I pose as counterexamples Uber's Greyball program, which in realtime tied multidimensional characteristics of a user's Uber account, available hardware information, and social networking profiles, amongst other signifiers, to determine who was or wasn't a possible government employee, and to literally change their perception of reality as a consequence.

As opposed to me using my information about my coworkers habits, statements, attire, friends and living situation to determine whether they are Democrats or Republicans, or dog people or cat people? If they asked me a question I could misrepresent reality based on assumptions about them just as well. (also, let's not go overboard by stating they changed perceptions. I'm sure they ended up doing that in some cases, but they misrepresented reality, and only through the specific aspects of reality you asked them about).

> Thirty years ago, your magazine subscriptions might have been shared amongst marketing organisations, sixty years ago, state intelligence services might have had access to them.

And 5000 years ago, everyone you had contact with already knew that information.

> Today, your Kindle reader tracks what passages you've read within books, and every website, and its third-party scripts and cookie shares, track precisely what you've read online.

Sure, if you opt in to using a device that gathers all that information. If I decided to broadcast what passages and pages I found interesting to those around me while reading a paperback, they would know a lot about what I found interesting as well. I'm not sure any equivalent action in ancient history where the nature of collecting or utilizing some resource isn't fairly obvious to those around you (unless you choose to hide it, which you can also do today).

> Size, scale, and rate, matter.

Yes, but in this case they are all relative. I content they were for the most part absolute in ancient history for intents and purposes, and they are becoming absolute again.

As a thought experiment, let's assume we're 50 years in the future, and information awareness is absolute. Humans have started colonizing Mars, and there is thus a communication delay between 22 seconds and 3 minutes depending planetary location. Transmission channels will be somewhat limited. Will each know everything about a person on Mars? Will Mars know everything about a person on Earth? Now assume some sort of colony or station in the Alpha Centauri system, with a 4.3 light year delay. How much knowledge will be shared about individuals across what communication channels exist? I think this is in some small way emulating the separation we had in our early history, and in your local area, there will be full information gathering, but that information will not necessarily be shared remotely, as the value is too low compared to the cost.

There's what's known about you, and then there's who knows it. I simple think that in the ancient past what was known was close to everything (but there was less to know), and who knew it was everyone you knew about (for the most part). I think that's becoming true again. Scale and size do matter, I just think in both cases it's everyone and anything (for values of those that make sense).