Hamilton College Thesis
Tag # 000880

Information Technology and their role in Surveillance Societies. This paper is a little out of date terminology wise, but many of the predictions that I made in 1994 have been pretty right on. Back then I still called the "Internet" the Information Superhighway , and most of my interactions with the net came through the Gopher system and then later Mosaic.

The paper talks about how information technology is used to gather personal information in an effort to control people. I review literature by Foucault and also look at Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon

My current project allmylifeforsale is informed by my research into information technologies. Part of this project to to see what happens when all of the information collected about my spending patterns and the like is radically changed. If I no longer own the things that supposedly define the type of consumer that I am, will I still consume the same goods and services? Or should the tele-marketers start to call the people who have bought my life?

It's not a bad read if you can deal with the "information superhighway" language. I still have to thank Trey and LM for proof reading this document. You may have noticed that I am still in need of a proofreader.