Tag: surveilance

Total surveillance as a civilizational stage…

I have another new (open access) piece just out, considering the intersection of surveillance and Science Fiction, this time in the context of the the ideologies of tech oligarchs, in a special section of Science as Culture, edited by Kean Birch and Les Levidow…

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2026.2646894#d1e124

The interpretative and polemical essay is written in the spirit and legacy of Barbrook and Cameron account of the ‘Californian Ideology’. Since Barbrook and Cameron wrote their text in the 1990s, a new and an increasingly coherent ideological constellation has emerged in Silicon Valley which Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres called TESCREAL (Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism). Unlike the preceding Californian Ideology of Barbrook and Cameron, I argue that this new ideological constellation is more strongly religious in its orientation, and that this is connected both to the broad cultural influence of science fiction (SF) and to the particularly limited way in which the ideology’s advocates understand SF. Based on a critical reading of the work of influential TESCREAL philosopher, Nick Bostrom, contextualized within a brief cultural history of the tech industry and its relationship to surveillance and SF, I argue that this increasingly religious ideological bundle serves to act as both an apologia for the already enormous infiltration of surveillance into everyday lives and frames total surveillance as a necessary stage in the path towards a transhuman, extraplanetary civilization.

Norway, After the Event

I grew up in Norway until I was about 7, and so it’s hardly surprising that I’ve been thinking a lot about the country and its people following the recent attacks. I’ve spent some time over the last few days reading the manifesto of the self-confessed killer, but I’m not going to spend any time going over that farago of confused reactionary stupidity here.

What I am primarily interested in is how the country reacts, especially as we are now coming up to ten years after the 9/11 attacks -and the world is still living in the aftermath not only of the attacks themselves but of the reaction of the US and its subordinates. Surveillance Studies, along with many other research fields has documented and analyzed the turn to righter security and increased surveillance, and the corresponding weakening of longstanding individual liberties and collective rights.

But, if Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, has anything to do with it, Norway will not be going down the same destructive, counter-productive and vengeful path. Even though he himself and many people he knew were the targets of the attack, he has been emphasizing since that Norway should not compromise its openness and democratic values, on the contrary they should strengthen their commitment to those ideals.The New York Times today quotes him as saying:

“It’s absolutely possible to have an open, democratic, inclusive society, and at the same time have security measures and not be naive. […] I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22 […] But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before.”

Let’s hope so. My thoughts remain with the families and friends of the victims, and all the people of Norway. I’ll write more about the wider European reaction tomorrow or over the weekend.