"That the social networks were formidable instruments of social control was already clear: whatever you do on the Internet, whatever message or e-mail sent, it leaves a permanent electronic trail that can be used by those who have an interest in doing so and for the most diverse reasons. "Zygmunt Bauman warns us against this in his new review Liquid Surveillance (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013), co-written with David Lyon, a Canadian sociologist, an expert on security issues and dedicated to the new Panopticon of modern society: the global network in which we all become visible and can be observed by an invisible power; a monstrous, faceless, omnipresent divinity, capable of controlling millions of people without being seen. "More than voluntary servitude, to quote the words of Etienne de la Boétie, we are dealing with a real relinquishment of privacy and of personal freedom. We throw ourselves into the ocean of unfreedom like so many Lemmings... "“The surveillance of performance twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week is becoming a DIY job for the subordinates (…) just as snails carry their homes, so the employees of the brave new liquid modern world must carry their personal panopticons. Employees have been charged with full and unconditional responsibility for keeping them in good repair and assuring their uninterrupted operation (leaving your mobile or iPhone at home when you go for a stroll, and thereby suspending the state of being constantly at a superior’s beck and call, is the case of serious misdemeanour).”"
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 08:54:24 +0000
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