Sarai Media Lab (eds.): Sensor-Census-Sensor: An International Colloquium on Information, Society, History and Politics. A Report (2007)

This book is a report on the International Colloquium that took place from November 30th, 2006 to December 2nd, 2006

Critical examination and investigation of the regimes and technologies of information harvesting, management, circulation and deployment as they have developed in India and Europe from early modernity till today.

The colloquium was organized by the Sarai Programme at CSDS, Delhi, in collaboration with the Waag Society, Amsterdam, and t0, Vienna, under the rubric of the network titled ‘Towards a Culture of Open Networks’

Sensor-Census-Sensor: Investigating Circuits of Information, Registering Changes of State
Produced and designed at the Sarai Media Lab, Delhi
Published by: The Sarai Programme, Delhi, India, November 2007
ISBN 9788190585378

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Viktor Mayer-Schönberger: Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age (2009)

Delete looks at the surprising phenomenon of perfect remembering in the digital age, and reveals why we must reintroduce our capacity to forget. Digital technology empowers us as never before, yet it has unforeseen consequences as well. Potentially humiliating content on Facebook is enshrined in cyberspace for future employers to see. Google remembers everything we’ve searched for and when. The digital realm remembers what is sometimes better forgotten, and this has profound implications for us all.

In Delete, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger traces the important role that forgetting has played throughout human history, from the ability to make sound decisions unencumbered by the past to the possibility of second chances. The written word made it possible for humans to remember across generations and time, yet now digital technology and global networks are overriding our natural ability to forget–the past is ever present, ready to be called up at the click of a mouse. Mayer-Schönberger examines the technology that’s facilitating the end of forgetting–digitization, cheap storage and easy retrieval, global access, and increasingly powerful software–and describes the dangers of everlasting digital memory, whether it’s outdated information taken out of context or compromising photos the Web won’t let us forget. He explains why information privacy rights and other fixes can’t help us, and proposes an ingeniously simple solution–expiration dates on information–that may.

Delete is an eye-opening book that will help us remember how to forget in the digital age.

Publisher Princeton University Press, 2009
ISBN 0691138613, 9780691138619
237 pages

publisher
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PDF (updated on 2012-9-23)

Mark B. Salter (ed.): Politics at the Airport (2008)

Establishes the airport as a crucial site in the rise of the surveillance state.

Few sites are more symbolic of both the opportunities and vulnerabilities of contemporary globalization than the international airport.

Politics at the Airport brings together leading scholars to examine how airports both shape and are shaped by current political, social, and economic conditions. Focusing on the ways that airports have become securitized, the essays address a wide range of practices and technologies—from architecture, biometric identification, and CCTV systems to “no-fly lists” and the privatization of border control—now being deployed to frame the social sorting of safe and potentially dangerous travelers.

This provocative volume broadens our understanding of the connections among power, space, bureaucracy, and migration while establishing the airport as critical to the study of politics and global life.

Contributors: Peter Adey, Colin J. Bennett, Gillian Fuller, Francisco R. Klauser, Gallya Lahav, David Lyon, Benjamin J. Muller, Valérie November, Jean Ruegg.

Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 2008
ISBN 0816650152, 9780816650156
Length 240 pages

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