Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-wxhwt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T07:24:57.132Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

4 - The Surveillance Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 September 2020

Firmin DeBrabander
Affiliation:
Maryland Institute College of Art
Get access

Summary

In the face of rapid technological changes transforming our lives in profound ways, the forecast for privacy looks dark. Its demise is hastened by “an unstoppable arms race in communication tools and data mining capabilities, which in turn are both due to the continued progression of Moore’s Law. The cost of keeping secrets increases inversely to decreases in the cost of computing.”1 Roughly, Moore’s Law holds that computing power will grow exponentially; digital devices will become faster and more powerful in rapid succession. Where technological changes may have once developed gradually, that is precisely not the case as in the digital age, where breakneck speed of change is the rule. And digital technology will become cheaper, more accessible, and broadly distributed in the process. Taken together, this means that the cost and hassle of protecting privacy grows exponentially, too. In the digital net that envelops our everyday lives, it will become increasingly more difficult and rare to perform any task without revealing ourselves, and opening our lives to spying eyes. And our spies are not content to watch us from without; they will install sentinels in our very bodies, and monitor us from within.

Type
Chapter
Information
Life after Privacy
Reclaiming Democracy in a Surveillance Society
, pp. 58 - 74
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×