The Panoptic Sort: A Political Economy of Personal Information (Critical Studies in Communication and in the Cultural Industries)

Personal privacy is one of the preoccupations of the 1990s but, according to the author, society is in danger of ignoring one of the most fundamental implications of the privacy debate - those of individual autonomy, collective agency and bureaucratic control. This book aims to inform the reader about exactly what is at stake when the bureaucracies of government and commerce compile, share and make use of an almost unlimited amount of information to manage the social and economic systems within their spheres. The author describes and analyzes today's panoptic operation, which depends on the ability of operators to classify and sort information about individuals in such a way that techniques of correct training or rehabilitation may subsequently be applied more efficiently.