[Reader-list] Surveillance after "Big Brother"

[Jeebesh Bagchi]

Menso Heus wrote:

>Thus, the statement that we are far away from Orwellian scenarios due to the fact that 
>there is no central logging being done is one I doubt, based on the explanation given 
>above. It's there, but it's more practical, more efficient and well masqueraded. 
>It's a bit like saying there's no such thing as a hamburger because there's only ground
>beef, lettuce, ketchup and buns and the manufacturer of the buns has no interest in the
>manufacturer of ketchup. The interests of the manufacturers is of course completely 
>irrelevant: If you stack up all the ingredients correctly, you end up with a burger 
>nonetheless. 
>  
>
This reminds me of a film made by Harun Farocki in late sixties. A 
workers working in enterprises making washing machine starts slowly 
assembling the various parts together so that he can have a washing 
machine at home. He landed up assembling a machine gun. !

Menso's reference to the contemporary information regimes  *distributed* 
nature of information gathering and certain 'focused' ordering when 
required is very critical and needs to be brought into the discussion on 
surveillance. Our understanding of power is usually underpined by 19th 
century understanding of a visible-centralised apparatus. What we are 
faced with is a far more insidous and imbticated in everyday structure 
of info-generation, classification and ordering. This much is very 
clear, that if we are part of an highly efficient electronic 
transactional space we are very vulnerable to tracking. Well our 
theories of social order would make us belive that efficient, formal 
transcational lives are suppose to be living under higher state of 
freedom...! (Menso thanks for the tracking route graph..)

best
jeebesh
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