iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era

by Mark Andrejevic

Overview

Choice Outstanding Title

Whether you’re purchasing groceries with your Safeway “club card” or casting a vote on American Idol, that data is being collected. From Amazon to iTunes, cell phones to GPS devices, Google to TiVo—all of these products and services give us an expansive sense of choice, access, and participation. But, in an era now marked by large-scale NSA operations that secretly monitor our email exchanges and internet surfing, Mark Andrejevic shows how these new technologies are increasingly employed as modes of surveillance and control.

Many contend that our proliferating interactive media empower individuals and democratize society. But, Andrejevic asks, at what cost? In iSpy, he reveals that these and other highly touted benefits are accompanied by hidden risks and potential threats that tend to be ignored by mainstream society. His book offers the first sustained critique of a concept that has been a talking point for twenty years, an up-to-the-minute survey of interactivity across multiple media platforms. It debunks the false promises of the digital revolution still touted by the popular media while seeking to rehabilitate, rather than simply write off, the potentially democratic uses of interactive media.

Andrejevic opens up the world of digital rights management and the data trail each of us leaves—data about our locations, preferences, or life events that are already put to use in various economic, political, and social contexts. He notes that, while citizens are becoming increasingly transparent to private and public monitoring agencies, they themselves are unable to access the information gathered about them—or know whether it’s even correct. (The watchmen, it seems, don’t want to be watched.) He also considers the appropriation of consumer marketing for political campaigns in targeting voters, and also examines the implications of the Internet for the so-called War on Terror.

In iSpy, Andrejevic poses real challenges for our digital future. Amazingly detailed, compellingly readable, it warns that we need to temper our enthusiasm for these technologies with a better understanding of the threats they pose—to be able to distinguish between interactivity as centralized control and as collaborative participation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780700616862
Publisher:	University Press of Kansas
Publication date:	09/19/2007
Series:	CultureAmerica
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Mark Andrejevic is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa and a Fellow at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched, in addition to a number of book chapters and articles on surveillance, new media, and popular culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

2. Three Dimensions of iCulture

3. iManagement, the Early Years

4. iCommerce: Interactivity Goes Mobile

5. iMedia: The Case of Interactive TV

6. iWar

7. iPolitics

8. iMonitoring: Keeping Track of One Another

9. Beyond Monitoring

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a book that everyone should read. Many other books have examined personal privacy in the digital world—among them, Solove’s The Digital Person and O’Harrow’s No Place to Hide—but Andrejevic’s emphasis on individuals’ complicity makes this a unique, compelling read. Lively, well written, and full of examples, this is an essential book that should lead to many interesting discussions.”—Choice

"Eloquently structured and sharply argued. . . . Andrejevic challenges us to think carefully about the ways in which interactive technologies have been all-too-easily aligned with technological progress, democracy, free speech, and political emancipation and decides to probe the darker sides of digitization."—Cinema Journal

"A provocative and readable romp through the contemporary U.S. ‘new media’ landscape."—American Studies

"Few interactive stones are left unturned in a work that is not only well researched but also remarkably up-to-date, a feature undoubtedly difficult to accomplish given the incredibly rapid pace of technological change and function creep. This book will be of special interest to students and established scholars in surveillance studies and Foucault-inspired studies of governance, but also those in communication studies more broadly. While not showing an easy way out, since most of us are already within the ‘digital enclosure,’ this book cannot help but be relevant to a popular readership as well."—Surveillance and Society

“A vivid and compelling account of how interactivity appears to be enhancing our power yet in fact is increasing the power of others to watch over us and control us.”—Daniel J. Solove, author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age

“Do not mistake this book for another rose-colored glimpse of the digital future. This is a sharp-eyed, sharp-elbowed tour of a darker world.”—Fred Turner, author of From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

“A hard-hitting critique, tempered by an ironic sense of humor.”—David Lyon, author of Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life

From the Publisher

This is a book that everyone should read. Lively, well written, and full of examples ... an essential book.

Choice