Every day precise details of our personal lives are collected, stored, retrieved, and processed within huge computer databases belonging to big corporations and government departments. Although no one may be spying, strangers do know intimate things about us, often without our knowing what they know, why they know it, or who shares this information. This is the surveillance society. In The Electronic Eye, David Lyon looks into our mediated way of life, where every transaction and phone call, border-crossing, vote, and application registers in some computer, to show how electronic surveillance influences social order in our day.
The increasing impact of computers on modern societies is seen by some as very promising, but by others as menacing in the extreme. The Electronic Eye is a genuine contribution to the understanding of modern institutions in an era of globalizing electronic communication.ContentsPrefaceSituating SurveillanceIntroduction: Body, Soul and Credit CardSurveillance in Modern SocietyNew Surveillance TechnologiesFrom Big Brother to the Electronic PanopticonSurveillance TrendsThe Surveillance State: Keeping Tabs on YouThe Surveillance State: From Tabs to TagsThe Transparent WorkerThe Targeted ConsumerCounter-SurveillanceChallenging SurveillancePrivacy, Power, PersonsAgainst Dystopia, Distance, DivisionBeyond Postmodern Paranoia