Windows Into the Soul: Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology

427 Pages·2016·2.361 MB·English

by  Gary T. Marx

Windows into the Soul

Windows into
the Soul
Surveillance and Society in an Age of High Technology
Gary T. Marx
Th e University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Gary T. Marx is professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
the author of Undercover: Police Surveillance in America. His writings have appeared
in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wash-
ington Post, and New Republic.
Th e University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
Th e University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by Th e University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28588- 7 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28591- 7 (paper)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 28607- 5 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226286075.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Marx, Gary T., author.
Title: Windows into the soul : surveillance and society in an age of high
technology / Gary T. Marx.
Description: Chicago ; London : Th e University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical reference and index.
Identifi ers: LCCN 201537631 | ISBN 9780226285887 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780226285917 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780226286075 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Electronic surveillance—Social aspects. | Electronic surveillance—
Moral and ethical aspects. | Technology—Social aspects.
Classifi cation: LCC HM846 .M57 2016 | DDC 303.48/3—dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/201503763]
meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
It’s a remarkable piece of apparatus.
Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony”

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xix
Introduction 1
part i: Concepts: Th e Need for a Modest but
Persistent Analyticity 11
1 Defi ning the Terms of Surveillance Studies 13
2 So What’s New? Classifying Means for Change and Continuity 40
3 So What’s Old? Classifying Goals for Continuity and Change 60
4 Th e Stuff of Surveillance: Varieties of Personal Information 86
part ii: Social Processes 113
5 Social Processes in Surveillance 115
6 A Tack in the Shoe and Taking the Shoe Off : Resistance and Counters
to Resistance 140
part iii: Culture and Contexts 173
7 Work: Th e Omniscient Organization Measures Everything Th at Moves 179
8 Children: Slap Th at Baby’s Bottom, Embed Th at ID Chip, and
Let It Begin 200
9 Th e Private within the Public: Psychological Report on Tom I. Voire 217
10 A Mood Apart: What’s Wrong with Tom? 230
11 Government and More: A Speech by the Hon. Rocky Bottoms to the
Society for the Advancement of Professional Surveillance 242
part iv: Ethics and Policy 265
12 Techno- Fallacies of the Information Age 267
13 An Ethics for the New (and Old) Surveillance 276
14 Windows into Hearts and Souls: Clear, Tinted, or Opaque Today? 290
Appendix: A Note on Values: Neither Technophobe nor Technophile 323
Notes 327
References 359
Index 389
Material Available Online at press.uchicago.edu/sites/marx/
Chapter 8 Children: Additional Material
Chapter 9 Voire Early Experience: Additional Material
Chapter 10 Voire Analysis: Additional Material
Chapter 12 Techno-Fallacies of the Information Age: Additional Material
Chapter 13 Ethics Questions: Additional Material
Additional Culture Chapters:
A Soul Train: Surveillance in Popular Music
B Th e New Surveillance in Visual Imagery
Additional appendix B “Your Papers Please”: Personal and Professional
Encounters with Surveillance
Preface
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few
I’ll be writing more in a week or two
The Beatles, “Paperback Writer”
In that song the Beatles nail the open-e nded, eternally expansive potential
of much scholarly inquiry. Th is book took much longer to complete than I
anticipated. As the tortoise’s tale reminds us, slow guys sometimes fi nish well.
Rather than writer’s block, the long gestation period refl ected writer’s free-
dom. Being retired (at least from a formal organization) off ered a research
grant for life and the delightful absence of pressure to fi nish. Th e more time
taken to write, the more information and ideas there are to be inspired and/
or challenged by, and the more one can learn. Since history and social life are
dynamic and answers oft en lead to new questions, the job is never fi nished.
Dispatching the image that some social scientists like to present of the
clean, deductive scientifi c model, I confess that my ideas and questions were
not packed neatly in boxes within boxes stacked in rows and columns. Rather
like toys thrown in the closet, they were piled high, and when I opened the
door, they came tumbling out. Th e self-fi lling closet never stayed empty.
Writing about a contemporary topic is like working with a jigsaw puzzle to
which new pieces are continually added and others subtracted even as the
formal structure of a puzzle shows constants.
While it runs contrary to a utilitarian cartographic view of the world,
Wynonna Judd got it right when she sang, “When I reach the place I’m going,
I will surely know my way.” Given enough time, diverse events and strands of
intellectual work may come together in unanticipated ways. One then discov-
ers what the inquiry is best about. Particularly when working in a new fi eld,
there may be a parallel to a sculptor contemplating a block of stone. Th e art-
ist knows that something worthwhile lies within, but only immersion in the
work can reveal it.