History of Surveillance: From the Plantation to Data Capitalism

Catalog description

Our awareness of surveillance has been dramatically heightened over the past few years. From Edward Snowden's revelations about the U.S. National Security Agency's data collection infrastructure to the extent to which companies like Facebook and Google monetize our personal information, surveillance has become one of the most controversial political issues of our time. In this course, we will place these developments in context, examining the long history of surveillance in the United States. We will begin with the 18th-century plantation "overseer," who was charged with ensuring the productivity and obedience of slaves under his watch. We will then move on to explore the emergence of commercial surveillance in the 19th century, which sought to gather intelligence on the credit worthiness and moral worthiness of businessmen in a rapidly growing, and increasingly impersonal, economy. Next, we will examine the shifting focus of surveillance from the late 19th century to the present, as it expanded from immigrants and criminals to include industrial workers, political radicals, civil rights activists (most notably Martin Luther King), the poor, and ultimately, all of us. Today, anyone who has a cell phone in their pocket, surfs the Internet, keeps up with friends through social networks, makes purchases with a credit card, uses membership cards, travels, or even just spends time in public spaces ought to assume that their movements, purchasing habits, communication metadata, social connections, and Internet browsing histories are being recorded, stored and analyzed for a variety of governmental and commercial purposes. In the final week of the course, we will debate the implications of these incursions into our public and private lives.