Thinking on Sunday: Digital Control – Surveillance and Power in the Age of Big Data

The corporate world is watching us, but why does no one watch them?

Our contemporary age is confronted by a profound contradiction: on the one hand, our lives as workers, consumers and citizens have become ever more monitored by new technologies. On the other, big business and finance become increasingly less regulated and controllable.

What does this technocratic ideology and surveillance-heavy culture reveal about the deeper reality of modern society? Monitored investigates the history and implications of this modern accountability paradox. Dr Peter Bloom reveals pervasive monitoring practices which mask how at its heart, the elite remains socially and ethically out of control.

Challenging their exploitive ‘accounting power’, Bloom demands that the systems that administer our lives are oriented to social liberation and new ways of being in the world.

Dr Peter Bloom heads the People and Organisations Department at the Open University, UK, and is the co-founder of the Research Centre ‘REEF’. His books include Digital Control: Surveillance and Power in the Age of Big Data (Pluto, 2019) and The CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life (Zed, 2018). His writing has featured in the Washington Post, Guardian, and New Statesman.

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Doors 2.45pm. Start 3pm.

Entry £8, £4 concessions (free to Conway Hall Ethical Society members, who should book these tickets in advance via the Book Now button)

Event is subject to capacity, without exceptions. Space will be reserved for ticket holders.

Brockway Room (Ground floor – accessible. Induction loop audio).

This is a Conway Hall Charitable Programme and is tax-exempt.