The Panoptic Sort
A Political Economy of Personal Information
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Product details:
- Edition number 2
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 7 October 2021
- ISBN 9780197579428
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages352 pages
- Size 159x234x21 mm
- Weight 572 g
- Language English 144
Categories
Short description:
The Panoptic Sort was an important contribution to contemporary understanding of the collection, processing, and use of personal information within the corporate sector. It represented a critical shift within the developing area of surveillance and privacy studies. This second edition features an updated Foreword focusing on developments within this field since its initial publication in 1993. The Afterword explores the possibilities for the mobilization of an engaged public willing and able to call for the establishment of limitations on the use of algorithmically processed data in ways that threaten the democratic process.
MoreLong description:
The Panoptic Sort was published in 1993. Its focus was on privacy and surveillance. But unlike the majority of publications addressing these topics in the United States at the time that were focused on the privacy concerns of individuals, especially those related to threats associated with government surveillance, that book sought to direct public toward the activities of commercial firms. It was highly critical of the failure of scholars and political activists to pay sufficient attention to the threats to individual autonomy, collective agency, and the exercise of social responsibility. The Panoptic Sort was intended to help us all to understand just what was at stake when the bureaucracies of government and commerce gathered, processed, and made use of an almost unlimited amount of personal, and transaction-generated information to manage social, economic, and political activities within society.
It argued that unlike Foucault's panoptic prison, which involved continual, all-encompassing surveillance, the panoptic systems being developed at that time were turning their attention toward the development of techniques for the identification and classification of disciplinary subjects into distinct groups in ways that would increase the efficiency with which the techniques of "correct training" could be applied to those group members. While the first edition provided numerous examples from marketing, employment, insurance, credit management, and the provision of government and social services, the second edition extends descriptions of the technologies that have been developed and incorporated into the panoptic sort in the nearly 30 years since its initial publication. In addition, it places these technological advances and systemic expansions into the context of quite significant transformations in the nature of capitalism. In addition to the massive expansion in the amount of data and information being gathered, processed, and distributed for use by corporations, government agencies, and newly developing public-private partnerships, advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning have placed the development of autonomous devices into positions of power that had barely been imagined in the past. Assessments of the implications for democracy that many associate with the possibility of an algorithmic Leviathan, invite a reconsideration of Jacques Ellul's distressing predictions about the future that ended the first edition of The Panoptic Sort.
Surveillance capitalism may have been birthed by Google but its gestation began towards the end of the twentieth century. This welcome reissue and update of Oscar Gandy's signal classic, The Panoptic Sort, comes with a luminous afterword, connecting digital discrimination in the 'dot-coms' with the exploitative activities of today's platforms. Their inequitable global challenge is unflinchingly explained along with hints of hope for a fairer future."
- David Lyon, Director, The Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen's University
Table of Contents:
List of Tables and Figures
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1: Prologue
Chapter 2: Information and Power
Chapter 3: Operating the Panoptic Sort
Chapter 4: Corporate Perspectives on the Panoptic Sort
Chapter 5: Relationships and Expectations
Chapter 6: The Social Origins of Views on Privacy
Chapter 7: A Data Protection Regime
Chapter 8:Conclusion
Notes
About the Book and Author
Index
