1. Permeable Boundaries in
the Software-sorted Society:
Surveillance and the
Differentiation of Mobility
David Wood
&
Stephen Graham

2. >> Introduction
• What are the intersections of digitised
surveillance, mobilities and boundaries ?
• Shift from electromechanical-bureaucratic
infrastructures and spaces to softwaresorted ones
• Real-time, continuous prioritisations and
inhibitions of mobility based on code and
judgements of fitness, risk or profitability
• Politics of code (Lessig) ; the automatic
production of space (Thrift and French)
• Lianos on ‘new social control‘:‘Automated
Socio-technical Environments’ (ASTEs):

3. >> New Social Control in
the Software-sorted City
• Control may be unintentional
• Determined by desire for smooth flow of
goods and services
• Decline of collective sociality
• Creation of a new form of institutional
sociality
– Governed by inhuman rules of automated flow
– Mobility of things privileged ahead of mobility of
persons
• c.f.: Norris: Result of digital enforcement =
Exclusion

4. >> Surveillance
and Permeability
• Boundaries delineate areas based on prior
categorical work.
• Surveillance = social mode of ordering
• Surveillance not about control of the person
– About control of information and activity
– Limiting mobility through boundaries
• Surveillance depends on the purity of
categories?
• But: successful boundaries impure:
– Allow different speeds of movement
– Allow different actants move in variable ways
• Differentially permeable

5. >> The Automatic
Sorting of Mobilities 1
• ‘Kinetic elite’
Electronic
Road Pricing

6. >> The Automatic
Sorting of Mobilities 2
• International Airports –
Biometric Check-in
– c.f.: Curry: ‘trusted’ versus
‘treacherous’ travellers
– Challenges concept of
‘national borders’ for some
– Makes borders more
impenetrable for others
‘Privium’ Members check-in
Schipol Airport, Netherlands

7. >> The Automatic
Sorting of Mobilities 3
• Internet Routing &
Call centre queuing
systems.
- ‘Premium’ users
versus others
- Neither likely to
know

8. >> The Politics of the
Software-sorted Society
• Technologically determinist?
• But - Thrift and French:
– Designed and initiated by human beings
– ‘Human’ concerns in mind
• Human is hidden
– Technological lock-in of a punctualised
collective.
• Serious sociopolitical problem
• Politics of surveillance in architecture and
code
• Boundaries: physical, informational, sociocultural
• Collectives relatively opaque to outsiders

9. >> Conclusions and
Future Directions
• Automated surveillance works to:
– enhance mobility of privileged
– add friction to mobility of less privileged
• Techniques often invisible
• Standardised mobility services replaced by
individualised / market-based
• Mobility shaped by hidden politics of code
• How can software sorting cope with
complexity?
1. Restructure society
- e.g.: Smart ID
2. Improve surveillance systems
- Move towards heuristic surveillance