Data Power (Paperback)

Jim E. Thatcher

ISBN 10: 0745340075 / ISBN 13: 9780745340074

Published by Pluto Press, London, 2021

About this Item

Paperback. In recent years, popular media have inundated audiences with sensationalised headlines recounting data breaches, new forms of surveillance and other dangers of our digital age. Despite their regularity, such accounts treat each case as unprecedented and unique. This book proposes a radical rethinking of the history, present and future of our relations with the digital, spatial technologies that increasingly mediate our everyday lives. From smartphones to surveillance cameras, to navigational satellites, these new technologies offer visions of integrated, smooth and efficient societies, even as they directly conflict with the ways users experience them. Recognising the potential for both control and liberation, the authors argue against both acquiescence to and rejection of these technologies. Through intentional use of the very systems that monitor them, activists from Charlottesville to Hong Kong are subverting, resisting and repurposing geographic technologies. Using examples as varied as writings on the first telephones to the experiences of a feminist collective for migrant women in Spain, the authors present a revolution of everyday technologies. In the face of the seemingly inevitable dominance of corporate interests, these technologies allow us to create new spaces of affinity, and a new politics of change. An introduction to learning how to protect ourselves and organise against Big Data Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9780745340074

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Data Power (Paperback)
• Publisher: Pluto Press, London
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745340075
• ISBN 13: 9780745340074
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

In recent years, popular media has inundated audiences with sensationalized headlines recounting data breaches, new forms of surveillance and other dangers of our digital age. Despite their regularity, such accounts treat each case as unprecedented and unique. This book proposes a radical rethinking of the history, present and future of our relations with the digital, spatial technologies that increasingly mediate our everyday lives.

From smartphones to surveillance cameras, to navigational satellites, these new technologies offer visions of integrated, smooth and efficient societies, even as they directly conflict with the ways users experience them. Recognizing the potential for both control and liberation, the authors argue against both acquiescence to and rejection of these technologies.

Through intentional use of the very systems that monitor them, activists from Charlottesville to Hong Kong are subverting, resisting and repurposing geographic technologies. Using examples as varied as writings on the first telephones to the experiences of a feminist collective for migrant women in Spain, the authors present a revolution of everyday technologies. In the face of the seemingly inevitable circumstances, these technologies allow us to create new spaces of affinity, and a new politics of change.

About the Author

Jim E. Thatcher is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma. 

Craig M. Dalton is Assistant Professor of Global Studies and Geography at Hofstra University.