Raymond Wacks: Privacy: A Very Short Introduction (2010)

It is widely recognized that our privacy is under threat. Electronic surveillance, biometrics, CCTV, ID cards, RFID codes, online security, encryption, the interception of email, the monitoring of employees–all raise fundamental questions about privacy. Legal expert Raymond Wacks here provides a compact introduction to this complex and controversial concept. He explores the tension between free speech and privacy which is often tested by paparazzi, with their intrusive journalism and sensational disclosures of the private lives of celebrities. He also looks at laws in many nations that regulate the collection and use of personal information, whether highly sensitive–medical and financial information–or commonplace transactions and details about us. The protection of personal data represents a classic instance of the law’s struggle to keep abreast with technology, as the nullinformation revolutionnull has spawned problems that test the ability of the law to provide adequate protection against abuse. The book concludes that, while under attack from many quarters, privacy remains an essential human right, recognized as such by many international organizations.

* Examines why we need privacy and value it so much, and what constitutes an invasion of privacy
* Considers the issues of privacy and security, privacy and the paparazzi, and the protection of personal data
* Discusses the importance of privacy in debates about law and ethics
* Puts privacy in its wider social context by giving examples of its sociological and psychological impact
* Ray Wacks is an expert on the legal protection of privacy and how this protection varies in different countries
* Part of the bestselling Very Short Introductions series – over three million copies sold worldwide

Publisher Oxford University Press, 2010
Series: Very Short Introductions
ISBN 0199556539, 9780199556533
Length 160 pages

publisher
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Graham MacPhee: The Architecture of the Visible: Technology and Urban Visual Culture (2002)

Visual technology saturates everyday life. Theories of the visual–now key to debates across cultural studies, social theory, art history, literary studies and philosophy–have interpreted this new condition as the beginning of a dystopian future, of cultural decline, social disempowerment and political passivity. Intellectuals–from Baudelaire to Debord, Benjamin, Virilio, Jameson, Baudrillard and Derrida–have explored how technology not only reinvents the visual, but also changes the nature of culture itself. The heartland of all such cultural analysis has been the city, from Baudelaire’s flaneur to Benjamin’s arcades.The Architecture of the Visible presents a wide-ranging critical reassessment of contemporary approaches to visual culture through an analysis of pivotal technological innovation from the telescope, through photography to film. Drawing on the examples of Paris and New York–two key world cities for over two centuries–Graham MacPhee analyzes how visual technology is revolutionizing the landscape of modern thought, politics and culture.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002
Volume 3 of Technologies series
ISBN 0826459269, 9780826459268
234 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-12-20)

Gábor Bódy, 1946-1985: A Presentation of His Work (1987) [Hungarian/English]

Gábor Bódy was a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, theoretic, and occasional actor. A pioneer of experimental filmmaking and film language, Bódy is one of the most important figures of Hungarian cinema.

This publication appeared on the occasion of the Gábor Bódy life-work exhibition organized in Budapest at the Ernst Museum, the Tinódi Cinema and the Palace of Exhibitions, 19 January – 8 February 1987.

Project and coordination: László Beke and Miklós Peternák
Publisher Műcsarnok, Budapest, 1987
ISBN 9637162704
335 pages

PDF, PDF (64 MB, updated on 2019-10-30)
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