[Reader-list] Surveillance after "Big Brother"

[Rana Dasgupta]

Further to Jeebesh's and Menso's postings.

I think these are raising the crucial point.

Jeebesh writes:

"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."

It is *this* 19th century understanding that is labelled "Big Brother".  And it is because
we are patently not living under this "visible-centralised apparatus" that the spectre of
"Big Brother" becomes an alibi for the system, a sign of its innocence.

This is the urgency of a proper language of the system we inhabit.  We need to be able
to express what the anxiety of this ubiquitous, but distributed system looks and feels
like in order to displace the "Big Brother" cliche which serves, like the Nazi death camps,
only as an image of a history that we have happily been able to escape.

R


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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