surveillance society

One of my perennial concerns is the growth of surveillance under network culture. I wanted to share two articles with you today, the first from Naomi Klein, who writes about the use of American surveillance technologies in the repression of dissidents in China’s All-Seeing Eye, the second a call to action by Bruce Schneier entitled Our Data, Ourselves. Maybe it’s that a generation that never experienced 1984 as a date in the future can’t conceive of the dangers of surevillance society. Maybe it’s that because the current administration has largely confined activities against citizens who aren’t "typical Americans." Maybe it’s that the Iron Curtain has been gone for so long. Maybe it’s that the Myspace generation is already used to constant exposure of their intimate activities.

Whatever the reason, to imagine that surveillance culture is innocent is naïve. For modernists like Hannes Meyer, transparency was something to build into public buildings so that politicians couldn’t operate behind closed doors anymore, not a means by which to repress the people. Times have changed, apparently. Nobody sees inside the Oval Office, but we have waned, our bodies transparent to  technology.

One of my perennial concerns is the growth of surveillance under network culture. I wanted to share two articles with you today, the first from Naomi Klein, who writes about the use of American surveillance technologies in the repression of dissidents in China’s All-Seeing Eye, the second a call to action by Bruce Schneier entitled Our Data, Ourselves. Maybe it’s that a generation that never experienced 1984 as a date in the future can’t conceive of the dangers of surevillance society. Maybe it’s that because the current administration has largely confined activities against citizens who aren’t "typical Americans." Maybe it’s that the Iron Curtain has been gone for so long. Maybe it’s that the Myspace generation is already used to constant exposure of their intimate activities.

Whatever the reason, to imagine that surveillance culture is innocent is naïve. For modernists like Hannes Meyer, transparency was something to build into public buildings so that politicians couldn’t operate behind closed doors anymore, not a means by which to repress the people. Times have changed, apparently. Nobody sees inside the Oval Office, but we have waned, our bodies transparent to  technology.