Life in the Wires is about life today, from Al-Jazeera to eBay, from creatively understanding new media to analyzing how questions of gender, race, class and colonialism have been deeply transformed by networked society.
Clare Dunsford will read from her book-in-progress, Spelling Love With an X: A Mother, A Son, and the Gene that Binds Them. Part medical memoir, part poetic meditation on identity in the age of the gene, the book is also the love story of a mother and her son.
Dr. Stephen Pfohl’s presentation, “Data Banked Bodies: New Global Technologies of Power” is a mixed-media performance exploring the social, psychic, and economic dynamics of information — intensive forms of global capitalist technology.
Watch or download now »
In every advanced industrial society, there exist disparate groups who have tried to spotlight excessive levels of surveillance, online and offline. They have protested ID cards, video-surveillance programs, intrusive marketing practices on the Internet, the integration of personal databases, and so on. They have attempted to “out” excessively intrusive organizations, and to render transparent their surveillance practices. There is plenty of evidence that these groups have become more active and more visible. But who are the “privacy advocates”? What are their main strategies, and why have their activities assumed a greater importance? The range of issues surrounding the collection, use, processing and dissemination of personal information by public and private organizations employing the most sophisticated information technologies is commonly assumed to be one of the critical issues of the “digital age.” But how do the advocates attempt to translate a strong, but vague sense, of public unease about privacy into meaningful social action? Is there the potential for a more coherent and international social movement to coalesce around these issues of similar strength and visibility to the environmental movement?
