PowerPoint Presentation Lecture

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surveillance and capture fdm 20c introduction
to digital media lecture 22.05.2003
warren sack / film digital media department /
university of california, santa cruz
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last time

• who owns the media today?
• ownership structures of local newspapers
• media map of u.s. media
• media map of international media
• types of connection between media companies
• mutual investment
• interlocking directorates
• news flows
• implications
• censorship
• focus
• fccs current review of ownership laws

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media concentration bagdikians chronology

• 1983 50 corporations dominated most every mass
  medium in the United States
• 1987 23 corporations dominated
• 1987-1996 the number decreased to 14
  corporations
• 1997 10 corporations dominated the media
• 2000 6 firms now dominate all U.S. mass media
• 2003 FCC to decide whether to retain existing
  media ownership laws

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what is the FCC?

• Federal Communications Commission
• http//www.fcc.gov/
• what does it do?
• listen to the interview by Robert McChesney with
  Commissioner Michael Copps
• http//www.will.uiuc.edu/am/mediamatters/default.h
  tm

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FCC rules currently under review

• Broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rule This
  policy has prohibited the two most important
  sources of information in a community-the daily
  newspaper and a broadcast TV station-from being
  owned by the same company.
• Local TV multiple ownership rule and the radio/TV
  cross-ownership rule These rules limit somewhat
  the number of stations that any one entity can
  own in a single community.
• National TV ownership rule This policy limits
  the number of TV stations a single company can
  own. The current limit prohibits a company from
  controlling stations that collectively reach 35
  percent of all TV households
• Dual Network Rule This policy prevents one of
  the four major networks-ABC, CBS, NBC, and
  Fox-from buying another network.
• http//www.democraticmedia.org/issues/mediaownersh
  ip/index.html

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outline

• surveillance
• history
• art
• technology
• legislation
• capture
• history (as extension of taylorism/fordism)
• comparison with surveillance
• cycle or process

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surveillance

• close watch kept over someone or something
• Etymology French, from surveiller to watch over,
  from sur- veiller to watch, from Latin
  vigilare, from vigil watchful

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agres surveillance model

• visual metaphors
• assumption that watching is nondisruptive
• territorial metaphors as in the invasion of
  private space
• centralized orchestration by means of a
  bureaucracy with a unified set of files
• identification with the state and malevolent aims
  of a specifically political nature

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history of surveillance the panopticon

• panopticon developed by jeremy bentham in the
  18th century for prison
• similar designs adapted for hospitals and
  factories
• in the 18th century prisons and hospitals known,
  in france, collectively as environments of
  humanity

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panopticon (1791)
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panopticon (1791)
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claude-nicolas ledouxs salt plant at
arc-et-senans (1779)
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salt plant at arc-et-senans (1779)
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surveillance as a dream of the 18th enlightenment

• Michel Foucault I would say that Bentham was
  the complement t Rousseau. What in fact was the
  Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the
  revolutionaries? It was the dream of a
  transparent society, visible and legible in each
  of its parts, the dream of there no longer
  existing any zones of darkness, zones established
  by the privledges of royal power or the
  prerogatives of some corporation.
• the eye of power, a conversation with jean-pierre
  barou and michelle perrot

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but...

• They that can give up essential liberty to
  obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither
  liberty nor safety.
• Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Historical Review of
  Pennsylvania

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surveillance today

• some artists and art groups concerned with
  surveillance
• see the zkm show, ctrl space, 2001, curated by
  thomas y. levin
• surveillance camera players
• http//www.notbored.org/scp-video.html
• institute for applied autonomy
• www.appliedautonomy.com/isee/info.htm
• julia scher
• jenny marketou
• steve mann
• http//www.eyetap.org/wearcam/shootingback/

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technologies of surveillance

• example viisage superbowl XXXV
• the company www.viisage.com
• the technology eigenfaces
• white.media.mit.edu/vismod/demos/facerec/basic.htm
  l

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from surveillance to dataveillance

• dataveillance/spying
• carnavor
• echelon
• total information awareness agency
• now the terrorism information awareness project
• name change as of may 21, 2003 to mollify
  congress worries about intrusion of the privacy
  of u.s. citizens
• headed by convicted felon (former admiral) john
  poindexter
• http//www.darpa.mil/iao/TIASystems.htm

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patriot act and post 9/11

• aclus analysis
• see http//www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cf
  m?ID11813c207
• new powers of surveillance, search and seizure
• threat to the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth
  and fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution

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surveillance/security/control/capture
l

• from surveillance to capture via grammars of
  action

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taylorism, fordism and grammars of action
ford assembly line circa 1925
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grammars of action/winograd flores
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capture (in comparison with surveillance)

• linguistic metaphors (e.g., grammars of action)
• instrumentation and reorganization of existing
  activities
• captured activity is assembled from standardized
  parts from an institutional setting
• decentralized and hetrogeneous organization
• the driving aims are not necessarily political,
  but philoophical/market driven

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political economy of capture

• ...by imposing a mathematically precise form
  upon previously unformalized activities, capture
  standardizes those activities and their component
  elements and thereby prepares them for an
  eventual transition to market-based relationships
• agre, p. 755

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five stage cycle of grammars of action

• analysis
• articulation
• imposition
• instrumentation
• elaboration
• agre, p. 746-747

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surveillance versus capture versus market
research?

• what is the aim of market research? at whom is it
  aimed?

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next time

• privacy