Month: August 2019
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Why I haven’t read Lolita
I posted a Twitter poll recently, by way of unburdening myself of the following opinion about Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, the book about a middle aged man who has a love affair with a 12-year-old girl. Here is the question: How many of you, like me, always found it bizarre and even a little hard to…
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Constantly monitor those in power
“Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” That’s a question we should be asking more in this day and age of constant surveillance. I’m toying with a proposal: Anyone who goes into public office should have absolutely no privacy whatsoever. Every movement should be available on video, every email and message logged and read, and every conversation recorded.…
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On the misbegotten phrase “surveillance capitalism”
The loaded phrase surveillance capitalism has been in circulation since at least 2014, but it came into much wider use this year with Shoshana Zuboff’s book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. The phrase means the system of extremely widespread surveillance by giant private corporations, entailing the systematic invasion of our privacy as well as control…
