digc302 intro

I'm really looking forward to researching an essay on surveillance and privacy, I've been looking at Google Glass for example.  I enjoyed the group work in game cultures last year and found the group dynamic really interesting but I think this session I'd like to really focus on the ideas we began to develop in that game group and research them in more detail.

I'm particularly interested in the implications of digital technology generally for identity and also how over time both social and political power structures have been challenged/transformed through its usage.  I have a few readings on surveillance and privacy from a digital subject last session which I'll read again as a starting point.  Then I'll look up the library databases.  The books on the Moodle site for the subject look interesting.  I may also look up Michel Foucault on power, I haven't read/understood a great deal of him, but I also want to look at other ideas on power.

As per the lecture Monday, it's difficult to define what the aim of such research would be.  What is my passion?  Why do I care about surveillance and privacy?  Who am I to make assumptions about what is good or best for others?  If people are unaware or don't care about being surveilled, does it matter?  If the answer is no, then we are enveloped by subjectivity it would seem, and lose all notion of an outside and objective world, the world that 'minds' us from ourselves.  I guess you could ask then, with all the affordance that such subjectivity seemingly grants us, are we more free in the long run?  I think either extreme of subjectivity or objectivity makes our world smaller, we seem to need a balance between the two.  In the same way, I think that both surveillance and privacy also perhaps need to be balanced.