Database State – a comprehensive map of UK government databases (2009)

In recent years, the UK Government has built or extended many central databases that hold information on every aspect of our lives, from health and education to welfare, law–enforcement and tax. This ‘Transformational Government’ programme was supposed to make public services better or cheaper, but it has been repeatedly challenged by controversies over effectiveness, privacy, legality and cost.

Many question the consequences of giving increasing numbers of civil servants daily access to our personal information. Objections range from cost through efficiency to privacy. The emphasis on data capture, form-filling, mechanical assessment and profiling damages professional responsibility and alienates the citizen from the state. Over two-thirds of the population no longer trust the government with their personal data.

This report charts these databases, creating the most comprehensive map so far of what has become Britain’s Database State.

All of these systems had a rationale and purpose. But this report shows how, in too many cases, the public are neither served nor protected by the increasingly complex and intrusive holdings of personal information invading every aspect of our lives.

By Ross Anderson, Ian Brown, Terri Dowty, Philip Inglesant, William Heath, Angela Sasse (March 2009)
Published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd., York, UK

More info (Guardian)

Direct download:
Database State – full report (PDF, 879KB)
Database State – Executive Summary (PDF, 260KB)

Sally Richards: Futurenet: The Past, Present, and Future of the Internet as Told by Its Creators and Visionaries (2002)

An eye-opening look at the next generation of the Internet
As the Internet becomes more mature, its ability to create and support new types of business models with the potential for sustained growth and profitability have captured the interest of a broad group of managers, investors, and entrepreneurs. In FutureNet, author Sally Richards introduces readers to the visionaries and companies shaping the networked world. The experiences and voices of Internet founders Vint Cerf and Len Kleinrock will take readers on a fascinating journey, revealing the power and scope of the next generation of the Internet. Powerhouse firms such as AT&T, Cisco, and MCI provide examples of how influential organizations are facilitating the next generation of the Internet, and creating solid business models that take advantage of this maturing technology. FutureNet will provide readers with an inside account of what lies ahead.

Published by John Wiley and Sons, 2002
ISBN 0471433241, 9780471433248
274 pages

Key terms: ARPANET, ICANN, Bluetooth, Bob Kahn, John Perry Barlow, DMCA, Kim Polese, Dmitry Sklyarov, Internet Archive, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Douglas Engelbart, Jon Postel, Stewart Brand, micropayment, Vinton Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, Vannevar Bush, Bob Young, ElcomSoft, Vint Cerf

More info

PDF

Ken Hillis: Digital Sensations: Space, Identity, and Embodiment in Virtual Reality (1999)

“Virtual reality is in the news and in the movies, on TV and in the air. Why is the technology — or the idea — so prevalent precisely now? What does it mean — what does it do — to us? Digital Sensations looks closely at the ways representational forms generated by communication technologies — especially digital/optical virtual technologies — affect the “lived” world.

Virtual reality, or VR, is a technological reproduction of the process of perceiving the real; yet that process is “filtered” through the social realities and embedded cultural assumptions about human bodies, perception, and space held by the technology’s creators.

Through critical histories of the technology — of vision, light, space, and embodiment — Ken Hillis traces the various and often contradictory intellectual and metaphysical impulses behind the Western transcendental wish to achieve an ever more perfect copy of the real. Because virtual technologies are new, these histories also address the often unintended and underconsidered consequences — such as alienating new forms of surveillance and commodification — flowing from their rapid dissemination. Current and proposed virtual technologies reflect a Western desire to escape the body Hillis says.

Exploring topics from VR and other, earlier visual technologies, Hillis’s penetrating perspective on the cultural power of place and space broadens our view of the interplay between social relations and technology.”

Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1999
Electronic Mediations series, 1
ISBN 0816632502, 9780816632503
271 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2017-2-10)