Technical surveillance of everyday life - "post-disciplinary" theoretical perspectives

Abstract

The development of microelectronics, databases and computer networks, in connection with an enhanced desire to control through identification, the entertainment culture, the managerial paradigm in public policy, a belief in technical progress, the commercialization of security, a decline of humanistic understanding of the individual and the rise of neo-liberalism, has resulted in an intensification of surveillance of everyday life Technical enhanced surveillance solutions have become perceived in specific social environments as being supposed to solve the "crime problem" Technical forms of surveillance are in full expansion in the form of video surveillance of public places (CCTV), Items of everyday life tagged with radio-frequency ID chips, in the form of traffic data retention in the public telecommunication networks etc All these forms enable ubiquitous and permanent surveillance All our communications and physical movements are registered, as well as the functioning of our body (with such devices as airport body screening) The paper presents post-disciplinary theories of surveillance, which reflect a rise of the information technology surveillance archipelago and criticise the Foucault's metaphor of panopticon disciplinary society The paper first presents Marxist and disciplinary theories of control and then the following theories (schizophrenic) control in "the society of control", synoptic control in "the viewer society", actuarial control of aggregates, rhizomatic surveillance and "on-the-surface" surveillance in "the society of simulacrum"