The idea for this project developed out of conversations in early 2003 between Mark and James, an... more The idea for this project developed out of conversations in early 2003 between Mark and James, and gradually with and among the other contributors, about the implications of the creation of a Department of Homeland Security in the US. While our project’s title refers to the formation of this department, and while the essays in this collection more or less consider Homeland Security’s rapid emergence as a central strategy of government and as an indispensable way of modernizing and rationalizing (‘advancing’ and ‘reinventing’) liberal government in these times, our project is and is not about this institution. We have sought to assemble perspectives about the various ways that a Homeland Security developed through (re-articulating, organizing, mobilizing, and acting upon) a variety of programs oriented toward the management of risk. These programs are not always affiliated directly with the State-administrations of government, even though these ‘non-State’ programs operate by generating policy (guidelines and rules of behavior) and through techniques for calculating, recognizing, and managing risk and various other kinds of perceived/imagined problems. Some of these programs are oriented toward managing risk in the US, and others are about achieving a national security beyond the borders of the US. Some of these programs pre-date September 11, 2001 and the Bush administration, and in many respects our project is less an intervention into discussions about September 11 than an attempt to understand collaboratively the many histories that have contributed to the formation of a Homeland Security. Furthermore, a project that references Homeland Security (however indirectly) needs to acknowledge how a Homeland Security’s mission, purview, and experimentalism have changed or been revised over its short history. Mark and I have had to rethink this project in light of events surrounding the devastation and responses (or lack of responsiveness) to Hurricane Katrina and surrounding the revelation (as this introduction goes to press) that President George Bush regularly has authorized, without courtsanction and oversight, the monitoring of communication by citizens and/or residents in the US since September 11, 2001 (and this revelation following revelations about secret courts and state-approved torture justified as
University, discuss the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance o... more University, discuss the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance of critiquing surveillance through the theoretical framework of power in addition to that of privacy. Although the decline of symbolic efficiency, brought on at least in part by the rise of big data, seems to disrupt the link that Michel Foucault draws between power and knowledge, Andrejevic considers possibilities for reimagining the knowledge structures associated with big data's infrastructure.
Everywhere the figure of the frame is in crisis. The boundaries that once limited information col... more Everywhere the figure of the frame is in crisis. The boundaries that once limited information collection and use have transformed alongside with the very forms of representation that we rely on to reproduce our reality for us. Total information collection and virtual reality go hand-in-hand. Both aspire to the digital reduplication of reality. The spatial boundaries that once differentiated spaces of work, leisure, and domesticity from one another have been reconfigured along with those that separated fact from fiction. The wager of this chapter is that these developments are related. Once upon a time, in the 1990s or thereabouts, the Internet was figured as a unique place (a " cyberspace ") we might enter into, complete with a new set of af-fordances: virtuality, interactivity, connectivity. In recent years, however, this vision of a distinct information space has overflowed the bounds of the screen, spilling out into the world formerly known as real life (" RL "). The contemporary technological imaginary collapses cyberspace into physical space, virtuality into reality— which perhaps explains the resurgent fascination with virtual reality and augmented reality. As the physical world— what cyberpunk authors once described as " meatspace " — becomes increasingly interactive, it takes on some of the characteristics of online spaces. In practice, this means providing the physical world with an interactive digital overlay: a prospect sometimes described as ubiquitous computing or, alternatively , the Internet of Things. We find traces of this overlay cropping up all
The critique of alienation is alive and well in some unexpected places in the digital era. Conser... more The critique of alienation is alive and well in some unexpected places in the digital era. Conservative columnists invoke Marx to tell us, for example, that blogs allow anyone with Internet access to “seize the means of production.” 1 Time magazine might as well have been invoking Marx in its announcement that we—all of us—are the “person of the year,” thanks to a digital revolution that is all “about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing.” 2 This is a twofer: not only a promise to overcome the ...
YouTube's vexed status as a commercial entity helps make it a useful object to think through... more YouTube's vexed status as a commercial entity helps make it a useful object to think through the reluctance of entrenched media industries to concede particular forms of control to users. After going through a period of relative non-profitability, the site's parent company, Google, is intent on “monetizing” YouTube's popularity—finding a way to profit from it. But these efforts are being thwarted, at least in part, by the fact that major media conglomerates are at best wary, and at worst aggressively litigious, toward an enterprise that has built a large ...
Mark Andrejevic, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and J.J. Sylvia, Ph.D. student in the Com... more Mark Andrejevic, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and J.J. Sylvia, Ph.D. student in the Communication Rhetoric and Digital Media Program at North Carolina State University, discusses the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance of critiquing surveillance through the theoretical framework of power in addition to that of privacy. Although the decline of symbolic efficiency, brought on at least in part by the rise of big data, seems to disrupt the link that Michel Foucault draws between power and knowledge, Andrejevic considers possibilities for reimagining the knowledge structures associated with big data’s infrastructure.
This article explores the implications of recent developments in predictive policing, defined as ... more This article explores the implications of recent developments in predictive policing, defined as the use of data-mining tools to predict and preempt criminal activity, for the relationship between citizenship and surveillance. It uses the example of predictive policing to consider the difference between panoptic modes of surveillance and emerging practices of environmental surveillance. The former rely on public awareness of surveillance and the internalization of the monitoring gaze, whereas the latter rely on actuarial modes of prediction. The growing emphasis on strategies for preemption rather than on policies for prevention displace political deliberation with technological expertise and work in the direction of automated decision making about resource allocation and armed response.
In February 2009 the House of Lords Constitutional Committee in the United Kingdom published the ... more In February 2009 the House of Lords Constitutional Committee in the United Kingdom published the report Surveillance: Citizens and the State. Some have hailed this as a landmark document. The following is one of four commentaries that the editors of Surveillance & Society solicited in response to the report.
This article explores a range of technologies for 'lateral surveillance' or peer monitori... more This article explores a range of technologies for 'lateral surveillance' or peer monitoring arguing that in a climate of perceived risk and savvy skepticism individuals are increasingly adopting practices associated with marketing and law enforcement to gain information about friends, family members, and prospective love interests. The article argues that the adoption of such technologies corresponds with an ideology of 'responsibilization' associated with the risk society: that consumers need training in the consumption of services and the development of expertise to monitor one another. Rather than displacing 'top-down' forms of monitoring, such practices emulate and amplify them, fostering the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere. In an age in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, all are simultaneously urged to become spies.
The critical literature on commercial monitoring and so-called “free labor” (Terranova, 2000) loc... more The critical literature on commercial monitoring and so-called “free labor” (Terranova, 2000) locates exploitation in realms beyond the workplace proper, noting the productivity of networked activity including the creation of user-generated-content and the profitability of commercial sites for social networking and communication. The changing context of productivity in these realms, however, requires further development of a critical concept of exploitation. This article defines exploitation as the extraction of unpaid, coerced, and alienated labor. It considers how such a definition might apply to various forms of unpaid but profit-generating online activity, arguing that commercial monitoring redoubles the conscious, intentional activity of users in ways that render it amenable to a critique of exploitation. Given the role of commercial monitoring in the emerging online economy, the paper emphasizes the importance of supplementing privacy critiques with approaches that identify th...
In this article, we consider the themes and reception of To Sam Ja ( That’s Me) , a Big Brother–s... more In this article, we consider the themes and reception of To Sam Ja ( That’s Me) , a Big Brother–style Balkan reality TV show filmed in Macedonia in 2004 and 2005 that featured several cast members from former Yugoslav republics living together. Drawing on examples taken from the production and reception of To Sam Ja, we explore the way in which the show manages political and economic conflicts by transposing them into the realm of the personal.
The proliferation of embedded and distributed sensors marks the increasing passive-ication of int... more The proliferation of embedded and distributed sensors marks the increasing passive-ication of interactivity. Devices such as smart phones, cameras, drones, and a growing array of environmental sensors (both fixed and mobile) and interactive online platforms have come to permeate daily life in technologically equipped societies. Consequently, we are witnessing a shift from targeted, purposeful, and discrete forms of information collection to always-on, ubiquitous, opportunistic ever-expanding forms of data capture. The increased use of sensors marks important changes to our understandings of surveillance, information processing, and privacy. In this article, we explore the transformations associated with the emerging sensing environment. The notion of a sensor society provides a conceptual basis for understanding the characteristics of emerging forms of monitoring and control.
Just as Web browsers use information about surfing habits to customize content and advertising, s... more Just as Web browsers use information about surfing habits to customize content and advertising, so the development of mobile commerce (m-commerce) promises to capitalize on the real-time monitoring of the time-space paths followed by consumers. Thanks to the development of wireless, networked devices, gathering detailed information about consumer mobility is becoming increasingly cheap and efficient. The result is that spaces associated with leisure and domesticity can become increasingly economically productive insofar as consumers are subjected to comprehensive monitoring in exchange for the promise of customization and individuation. Drawing on examples from e-commerce and popular culture, this article explores the connection between the consumption of space and the incitement to mobility, arguing that the mass customized economy represents a continuation of the logic of market rationalization in the network era.
Surveillance-based reality television has emerged as a resurgent programming genre in the US and ... more Surveillance-based reality television has emerged as a resurgent programming genre in the US and Western Europe during a time when the online economy is becoming increasingly reliant upon surveillance as a form of economic exploitation. The portrayal of surveillance through ‘reality TV’ as a form of entertainment and self-expression can thus be understood as playing an important role in training viewers and consumers for their role in an ‘interactive’ economy. This article relies on interviews with cast members and producers of MTV’s popular reality show ‘Road Rules’, to explore the form of subjectivity that corresponds to its implicit definition of ‘reality’. This form of subjectivity reinforces the promise of the interactive economy to democratize production by relinquishing control to consumers and viewers. Surveillance is portrayed not as a form of social control, but as the democratization of celebrity - a fact that has disturbing implications for the democratic potential of th...
The idea for this project developed out of conversations in early 2003 between Mark and James, an... more The idea for this project developed out of conversations in early 2003 between Mark and James, and gradually with and among the other contributors, about the implications of the creation of a Department of Homeland Security in the US. While our project’s title refers to the formation of this department, and while the essays in this collection more or less consider Homeland Security’s rapid emergence as a central strategy of government and as an indispensable way of modernizing and rationalizing (‘advancing’ and ‘reinventing’) liberal government in these times, our project is and is not about this institution. We have sought to assemble perspectives about the various ways that a Homeland Security developed through (re-articulating, organizing, mobilizing, and acting upon) a variety of programs oriented toward the management of risk. These programs are not always affiliated directly with the State-administrations of government, even though these ‘non-State’ programs operate by generating policy (guidelines and rules of behavior) and through techniques for calculating, recognizing, and managing risk and various other kinds of perceived/imagined problems. Some of these programs are oriented toward managing risk in the US, and others are about achieving a national security beyond the borders of the US. Some of these programs pre-date September 11, 2001 and the Bush administration, and in many respects our project is less an intervention into discussions about September 11 than an attempt to understand collaboratively the many histories that have contributed to the formation of a Homeland Security. Furthermore, a project that references Homeland Security (however indirectly) needs to acknowledge how a Homeland Security’s mission, purview, and experimentalism have changed or been revised over its short history. Mark and I have had to rethink this project in light of events surrounding the devastation and responses (or lack of responsiveness) to Hurricane Katrina and surrounding the revelation (as this introduction goes to press) that President George Bush regularly has authorized, without courtsanction and oversight, the monitoring of communication by citizens and/or residents in the US since September 11, 2001 (and this revelation following revelations about secret courts and state-approved torture justified as
University, discuss the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance o... more University, discuss the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance of critiquing surveillance through the theoretical framework of power in addition to that of privacy. Although the decline of symbolic efficiency, brought on at least in part by the rise of big data, seems to disrupt the link that Michel Foucault draws between power and knowledge, Andrejevic considers possibilities for reimagining the knowledge structures associated with big data's infrastructure.
Everywhere the figure of the frame is in crisis. The boundaries that once limited information col... more Everywhere the figure of the frame is in crisis. The boundaries that once limited information collection and use have transformed alongside with the very forms of representation that we rely on to reproduce our reality for us. Total information collection and virtual reality go hand-in-hand. Both aspire to the digital reduplication of reality. The spatial boundaries that once differentiated spaces of work, leisure, and domesticity from one another have been reconfigured along with those that separated fact from fiction. The wager of this chapter is that these developments are related. Once upon a time, in the 1990s or thereabouts, the Internet was figured as a unique place (a " cyberspace ") we might enter into, complete with a new set of af-fordances: virtuality, interactivity, connectivity. In recent years, however, this vision of a distinct information space has overflowed the bounds of the screen, spilling out into the world formerly known as real life (" RL "). The contemporary technological imaginary collapses cyberspace into physical space, virtuality into reality— which perhaps explains the resurgent fascination with virtual reality and augmented reality. As the physical world— what cyberpunk authors once described as " meatspace " — becomes increasingly interactive, it takes on some of the characteristics of online spaces. In practice, this means providing the physical world with an interactive digital overlay: a prospect sometimes described as ubiquitous computing or, alternatively , the Internet of Things. We find traces of this overlay cropping up all
The critique of alienation is alive and well in some unexpected places in the digital era. Conser... more The critique of alienation is alive and well in some unexpected places in the digital era. Conservative columnists invoke Marx to tell us, for example, that blogs allow anyone with Internet access to “seize the means of production.” 1 Time magazine might as well have been invoking Marx in its announcement that we—all of us—are the “person of the year,” thanks to a digital revolution that is all “about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing.” 2 This is a twofer: not only a promise to overcome the ...
YouTube's vexed status as a commercial entity helps make it a useful object to think through... more YouTube's vexed status as a commercial entity helps make it a useful object to think through the reluctance of entrenched media industries to concede particular forms of control to users. After going through a period of relative non-profitability, the site's parent company, Google, is intent on “monetizing” YouTube's popularity—finding a way to profit from it. But these efforts are being thwarted, at least in part, by the fact that major media conglomerates are at best wary, and at worst aggressively litigious, toward an enterprise that has built a large ...
Mark Andrejevic, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and J.J. Sylvia, Ph.D. student in the Com... more Mark Andrejevic, Associate Professor at Pomona College, and J.J. Sylvia, Ph.D. student in the Communication Rhetoric and Digital Media Program at North Carolina State University, discusses the impact of the neo-materialist turn for media studies and the importance of critiquing surveillance through the theoretical framework of power in addition to that of privacy. Although the decline of symbolic efficiency, brought on at least in part by the rise of big data, seems to disrupt the link that Michel Foucault draws between power and knowledge, Andrejevic considers possibilities for reimagining the knowledge structures associated with big data’s infrastructure.
This article explores the implications of recent developments in predictive policing, defined as ... more This article explores the implications of recent developments in predictive policing, defined as the use of data-mining tools to predict and preempt criminal activity, for the relationship between citizenship and surveillance. It uses the example of predictive policing to consider the difference between panoptic modes of surveillance and emerging practices of environmental surveillance. The former rely on public awareness of surveillance and the internalization of the monitoring gaze, whereas the latter rely on actuarial modes of prediction. The growing emphasis on strategies for preemption rather than on policies for prevention displace political deliberation with technological expertise and work in the direction of automated decision making about resource allocation and armed response.
In February 2009 the House of Lords Constitutional Committee in the United Kingdom published the ... more In February 2009 the House of Lords Constitutional Committee in the United Kingdom published the report Surveillance: Citizens and the State. Some have hailed this as a landmark document. The following is one of four commentaries that the editors of Surveillance & Society solicited in response to the report.
This article explores a range of technologies for 'lateral surveillance' or peer monitori... more This article explores a range of technologies for 'lateral surveillance' or peer monitoring arguing that in a climate of perceived risk and savvy skepticism individuals are increasingly adopting practices associated with marketing and law enforcement to gain information about friends, family members, and prospective love interests. The article argues that the adoption of such technologies corresponds with an ideology of 'responsibilization' associated with the risk society: that consumers need training in the consumption of services and the development of expertise to monitor one another. Rather than displacing 'top-down' forms of monitoring, such practices emulate and amplify them, fostering the internalization of government strategies and their deployment in the private sphere. In an age in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect, all are simultaneously urged to become spies.
The critical literature on commercial monitoring and so-called “free labor” (Terranova, 2000) loc... more The critical literature on commercial monitoring and so-called “free labor” (Terranova, 2000) locates exploitation in realms beyond the workplace proper, noting the productivity of networked activity including the creation of user-generated-content and the profitability of commercial sites for social networking and communication. The changing context of productivity in these realms, however, requires further development of a critical concept of exploitation. This article defines exploitation as the extraction of unpaid, coerced, and alienated labor. It considers how such a definition might apply to various forms of unpaid but profit-generating online activity, arguing that commercial monitoring redoubles the conscious, intentional activity of users in ways that render it amenable to a critique of exploitation. Given the role of commercial monitoring in the emerging online economy, the paper emphasizes the importance of supplementing privacy critiques with approaches that identify th...
In this article, we consider the themes and reception of To Sam Ja ( That’s Me) , a Big Brother–s... more In this article, we consider the themes and reception of To Sam Ja ( That’s Me) , a Big Brother–style Balkan reality TV show filmed in Macedonia in 2004 and 2005 that featured several cast members from former Yugoslav republics living together. Drawing on examples taken from the production and reception of To Sam Ja, we explore the way in which the show manages political and economic conflicts by transposing them into the realm of the personal.
The proliferation of embedded and distributed sensors marks the increasing passive-ication of int... more The proliferation of embedded and distributed sensors marks the increasing passive-ication of interactivity. Devices such as smart phones, cameras, drones, and a growing array of environmental sensors (both fixed and mobile) and interactive online platforms have come to permeate daily life in technologically equipped societies. Consequently, we are witnessing a shift from targeted, purposeful, and discrete forms of information collection to always-on, ubiquitous, opportunistic ever-expanding forms of data capture. The increased use of sensors marks important changes to our understandings of surveillance, information processing, and privacy. In this article, we explore the transformations associated with the emerging sensing environment. The notion of a sensor society provides a conceptual basis for understanding the characteristics of emerging forms of monitoring and control.
Just as Web browsers use information about surfing habits to customize content and advertising, s... more Just as Web browsers use information about surfing habits to customize content and advertising, so the development of mobile commerce (m-commerce) promises to capitalize on the real-time monitoring of the time-space paths followed by consumers. Thanks to the development of wireless, networked devices, gathering detailed information about consumer mobility is becoming increasingly cheap and efficient. The result is that spaces associated with leisure and domesticity can become increasingly economically productive insofar as consumers are subjected to comprehensive monitoring in exchange for the promise of customization and individuation. Drawing on examples from e-commerce and popular culture, this article explores the connection between the consumption of space and the incitement to mobility, arguing that the mass customized economy represents a continuation of the logic of market rationalization in the network era.
Surveillance-based reality television has emerged as a resurgent programming genre in the US and ... more Surveillance-based reality television has emerged as a resurgent programming genre in the US and Western Europe during a time when the online economy is becoming increasingly reliant upon surveillance as a form of economic exploitation. The portrayal of surveillance through ‘reality TV’ as a form of entertainment and self-expression can thus be understood as playing an important role in training viewers and consumers for their role in an ‘interactive’ economy. This article relies on interviews with cast members and producers of MTV’s popular reality show ‘Road Rules’, to explore the form of subjectivity that corresponds to its implicit definition of ‘reality’. This form of subjectivity reinforces the promise of the interactive economy to democratize production by relinquishing control to consumers and viewers. Surveillance is portrayed not as a form of social control, but as the democratization of celebrity - a fact that has disturbing implications for the democratic potential of th...
In the face of social media's problems with fake news and political polarisation, the ready respo... more In the face of social media's problems with fake news and political polarisation, the ready response has been to propose economic, technical, and educational fixes. Reacting to US concerns about Russian disinformation campaigns, for example, Facebook executive Rob Goldman tweeted: 'There are easy ways to fight this. […] Finland, Sweden and Holland have all taught digital literacy and critical thinking about misinformation to great effect.' 1 A recent report by the Data & Society Research Institute considered a range of possible solutions, including fortified factchecking and verification services and incentives for de-emphasising fake content and closing down the accounts of those who circulate it. 2 The hope embedded in such responses is that the overarching commercial model we have developed for circulating news and information online can be salvaged for the purposes of informed communication and democratic deliberation. Some combination of self-regulation by platform giants, public pressure to reconfigure economic incentives, antitrust measures, and increased media literacy on the part of users has been advanced as a strategy for curbing the flood of politically polarised misinformation online. This chapter argues that the concerns raised by commercial social media are significant and structural, which means the commercial model we have developed is not salvageable solely through education and self-regulation. Rather we need to critically examine the broader connections between media infrastructures and social policies that erode the resources for mutual recognition and collective deliberation. The question is not just what kind of information people receive online, but the conditions under which they receive it, and the disposition these foster. Diverse content and perspectives are necessary but not sufficient for democratic deliberation. Meaningful deliberative processes rely equally upon the formation of a 'discourse ethics', which, 'by requiring that perspective-taking be 1 Sheera Frenkel, 'Fact-Checking a Facebook Executive's Comments on Russian Interference' The New York Times (19 February 2018) www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/ technology/facebook-executive-russia-tweets-fact-check.html, accessed 30 August 2019.
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