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CCT 205: Digital Innovation and Cultural Transformation

CCT 205: Digital Innovation and Cultural Transformation. Lecture 7: Technology and Surveillance. Administrivia. A&R questions to come shortly - obviously, deadline not today anymore (next week…). Surveillance and modernity. Nation-state Bureaucracy Technique/Technical Logic

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CCT 205: Digital Innovation and Cultural Transformation

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  1. CCT 205: Digital Innovation and Cultural Transformation Lecture 7: Technology and Surveillance

  2. Administrivia • A&R questions to come shortly - obviously, deadline not today anymore (next week…)

  3. Surveillance and modernity • Nation-state • Bureaucracy • Technique/Technical Logic • Political Economy

  4. Nation-State • Surveillance rises hand in hand with state control - e.g., military/police control • Extreme cases in totalitarian states, real or fictional (e.g., 1984)

  5. Bureaucracy • Logic of bureaucratic control expands • Weber’s “iron cage” - in attempt to control everything, everything is monitored and calculated - to illogical or immoral ends • Extreme real/fictional examples - but also lesser examples (e.g., taxation and health care, and “undocumented” workers)

  6. Technical Logic • Ellul - technology more as technique - mechanized control creates the conditions it requires in social/civil world • Technical requirements create “self-completing system” of technical logic - examples?

  7. Political Economy • Conflicting interests of power - esp. with respect to corporate power and maintenance of class interest • Managerial control and determination of technology (and resistance) • Gandy’s Panoptic Sort - classification of individuals as consumers with given demographic commonalities • Others?

  8. Superpanopticon • Bentham’s Panopticon prison - central tower design of potential (but invisible) constant monitoring • Poster and databases - data represents us, we become the objects of data system, and we then feed the system by our actions - while not owning the data ourselves • Creates a superpanoptic effect - we create the cage we’re trapped in - examples?

  9. Hypersurveillance • Hyper in sense of surreal, not more • Baudrillard’s hyperreality - a society of images and symbols intentionally detached from reality (e.g., “war games”, real or fictional) • Not new - but IT being about the manipulation of digital artefacts makes it all the easier and faster • Examples?

  10. Surveillance in Organizations (Zuboff) • Nation-state - organizational command of information for national interests (e.g., current concern over passports) • Bureaucracy - IT can streamline and further centralize organizational power and broaden control in real time - e.g., “dashboards” for information monitoring, tying into Blackberrys for 24/7 surveillance

  11. Organizations (2) • Technique - IT at all levels - e.g., some KM folk who insist anything that can be digitized must be - to what effect? • Political economy - usually those making these decisions are in positions of power, and decisions done to sustain or maximiize power and control

  12. Implications on Organization • Database “takes on a life of its own” -grassroots intelligence marginalized, actions taken on trends vs. actual data • Expertise concentrates - even former white-collar jobs involve “acting-on” vs. “acting with” (and thus subsequently downsized…) • But - eventually consumes itself (e.g., failures of US intelligence pre 9/11 - lots of technology, very little sense of what was going on…)

  13. Revenge of simulacra • Simulation and hyperreality - we might be monitoring things that aren’t really there • Data integration and sense-making - having information is one thing, making sense of it is another (and underfunded) • Identity confusion - phishing, pharming, identity theft, other manipulations of data?

  14. “Returning the body” • Personhood important - hypersurveillance and globalization aside, we need food, shelter, communication, love, and other mundane things technology still imitates badly • Limitations on omnipresence and perfect control - we might not be good at playing God • Politics and surveillance as joint concern - commitment to sniffing out abuses of surveillance and awareness of its limitations and benefits • Zuboff and organizational learning - information as collective good

  15. Learning Journal #4 • Have you experienced a situation where external information about you has directly influenced your interaction with society? To what effect? How did you deal with this?

  16. Next Week • Matt Gorbet next week (should be fun!) • Labs tonight - introduction of flash learning object assignment

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