Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life (Issues in Society)

The walls have ears and the hills have eyes, but who's got the brain? Canadian sociologist David Lyon argues that we are complicit in much of our recent loss of privacy, but that makes it no less sinister. Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life critically examines the nature and potential of monitoring technologies serving governmental and corporate interests. Part of Tim May's very smart Issues in Society series, it features a background check on the context of modern surveillance, an updated view of data-collection techniques and practices, and a projection of new political and social meanings made available through the panopticon.

Lyon rarely encrypts his work in academese, but this accessibility should not be confused with oversimplification. In just over 150 pages he has compressed countless brain-hours of analysis and speculation--few readers will be able to digest it in one sitting or even one reading. Indeed, he spends a fair amount of time poking at the simplifications of other analysts, winking at the reader with sly passages like this:

"Are there really godlike operators who can control the city using a mouse and a keyboard? Such absolute power is scarcely visible in practice. The sheer mass of data would be impossible to handle. Even in SimCity one cannot keep track of everything."

Crucial reading for anyone concerned with privacy issues, Surveillance Society restages the debate over ubiquitous monitoring and encourages deeper thinking on all sides. --Rob Lightner