クリックひとつから、通信、購買、医療機関や役所でのやりとりまで、私たちのあらゆる行動は記録、識別、追尾、追跡されています。それはデジタルに依存した今日の社会の仕組みであり、社会、政治、ビジネスのあらゆる場面で不可欠となっています。監視は本質的に善でも悪でもない中立的なものですが、データの扱いやそこから導き出される結果はすべての人に関わる重大な問題で、倫理的・政治的議論が欠かせません。監視がいかに人々を可視化し、現在の普及率に達するまでに成長したのか、それが文化的特徴にどのように関わっているかを考察します。倫理面についても検討し、監視が政治的闘争を引き起こす可能性を探ります。
 

• Explores the scope of surveillance in society today, and the ways in which data is gathered on people's lives
• Considers the technologies involved in surveillance, and how it grew to its present size and prevalence
• Considers the ethical and political debates surrounding surveillance today
• Demonstrates how surveillance has a very tangible impact on our everyday lives

 
Surveillance permeates every aspect of our lives today. Once a more limited and often remote aspect of social life, today surveillance is central to political, economic, and everyday life. Every click on the keyboard, every call, text or email, every purchase, every contact with a doctor or the police or a government department, each time you walk under a video camera or pass through a security check, and in many other ways, you are recorded, identified, traced, and tracked. Who processes this free-flowing data, how, and with what consequences, is a critical question affecting everyone.

This is not an alien conspiracy. It is the way today's digitally-dependent world works. Surveillance is not inherently good or bad but neither is it neutral. It urgently needs to be understood better because people's lives and life-chances depend on it. Today surveillance is central to doing business, meeting friends, organizing governance, maintaining security, and being entertained. Surveillance requires not just exploration and understanding but ethical guidance and political debate. How you get credit or welfare benefits or get on a no-fly list or are ranked as a consumer depends on surveillance. This Very Short Introduction investigates how surveillance makes people visible, how it grew to its present size and prevalence, how it came to rely on technologies of data-handling, and how it developed its own cultural features. Throughout, David Lyon also considers the ethics of surveillance, and explores its potential in prompting political struggles.