Participation Literacy
Week# 3 “Big Brother is you, watching.”
Trebor Scholz | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Conversation: Privacy and Social Networking
week 3
Feb 10, 12
Required Reading:
Mark Andrejevic, \"iMonitoring Keeping Track of One Another,\" Mark Andrejevic, iSpy Surveillance and
Power in the Interactive Era (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007) 212-240.
# Group project: Video conversation about the readings (due Feb 12 before class)
Trebor Scholz | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

# Group project: Video discussion on Seesmic.com about the readings (due Feb 12 before class)
Trebor Scholz | LCST 3073 A | Spring 2009

Is privacy over?

Ordering pizza in the future
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNJl9EEcsoE

http://captainstlucifer.>iles.wordpress.com/2007/11/xray‐glasses.jpg
Search engine surveillance for personal reasons (Andrejevic, 225)
“Unless we start monitoring our publicly available data shadows, we’re often unaware of the
information available about ourselves online.” (Andrejevic, 228)

http://ginacobb.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/29/bushfalkner.jpg
Spouse of 9/11 victim and father: “What I saw is what I want to see in the heart
and in the soul in the man who sits in the highest elected office in our country.”
Political leaders internalize the lessons of Fakeout (Andrejevic, 217)

Gladwell: “the 2nd brain” is the gut...” (Andrejevic, 238)

http://>ire>ly.com
Locate your child with Firefly
“We are being habituated to an emerging surveillance regime i which we all know that we could be
monitored at any time- a realization driven home by the repetitive drum beat of investigative reports
about commercial and state monitoring.” (239)
“We transform the goals of authorities into the choices and commitments of individuals.” (Andrejevic, 240)

http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/encyclopedia_images/_DIDTHEY.GIF
Find out when they read your email and how long they looked at it

http://netdetective.com/

http://www.snapshotspy.com/special/index.htm
“We... develop strategies of investigation and verification not just for the claims of politicians,
but for those of friends, family, lovers, and coworkers.”
“We appeal to the evidence of our eyes and not to the words of others.” (Andrejevic, 217)

http://www.datedetectives.com/

-Buzz Group Break-
What question would you most like to have answered
regarding the topic of the lecture today?
Of all ideas and points you have heard so far today, which is
the most obscure or ambiguous to you?
What is the most contentious statement you heard in the
lecture so far?

Privacy in Google Latitude
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXmcoadcoJY

http://is.gd/j7VF

http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/>lash/i/i_06/i_06_s/i_06_s_mou/i_06_s_mou_1b.jpg
Do social media bring us closer to Frederick Taylor’s vision of the domestication of control?

“No drawer will be left unopened...”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bypz2f3HbYU
Room Raiders MTV
”

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_1Op3HqijHBs/SPybhAtqWEI/AAAAAAAAAGI/zEND8OlgrwI/s1600/IMG_6966.JPG
Interactivity as surveillance and verification

http://greenskye.>iles.wordpress.com/2008/03/csi‐miami.jpg
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/images/580_big01.jpg
“Popular ... tv programming portrays surveillance as a means
of flushing out the phonies” (Andrejevic, 231)

http://www.appliedautonomy.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCTlhmcgSE
The Real World, MTV
“voyeur nation”
“a culture of mutual detection”
“Big Brother is you, watching.”
(Andrejevic, 239, 219)
In an era in which everyone is to be considered potentially suspect,
we are invited to become spies-- for our own good.” (Andrejevic, 240)

You have choices.
Decide when privacy really matters
and when anonymity instead of
complete privacy is good enough.
Adjust your privacy settings.
Live out in the open: it’ll help you to
collaborate.
Learn to live with transparency, make
mistakes and correct them, be honest.

Trebor Scholz
scholzt@newschool.edu
The New School University
Twitter: trebors
Blog: http://www.collectivate.net/journalisms
This presentation is published under the creative commons attribution, non-commercial, share alike license.