Copyright © David Lyon 2018

The right of David Lyon to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2018 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-7172-7

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The more I got into this piece of writing, the more I realized that such an ambitious project is rife with risks. I set out to pull together in one place much marvellous scholarship on the everyday experience of surveillance, that I think adds up to a culture of surveillance. I also wanted to wean people away from George Orwell – I’m a believer in breastfeeding and its wholesome benefits, so read this rightly! – and to invite readers to consider other fictional accounts suited to the present, in particular, Dave Eggers’ The Circle. And on top of that, I hoped to show that however enjoyable or innocent some aspects of surveillance might appear, they cannot safely be seen separately from the powerful forces of consumer, or now, ‘surveillance’ capitalism, or of administrative, national security and policing surveillance.

So it is with a great sense of gratitude to many people that I acknowledge help from many quarters, starting at home. My life-partner, Sue, has not only survived another book but has done so with patience and grace even though my distractions did wear these thin at times. What she demonstrates is captured in an ancient Hebrew word hesed, meaning ‘steadfast love’. Other family members, in turn, both children and grandchildren, have borne with this project, with only occasional eye-rolling. They recognize my desire to make a difference, to offer to their generations ways of understanding and responding to the accelerating changes occurring each day; to help them live with hope.

My students and colleagues, especially those at Queen’s University, have encouraged and challenged me with their comments and stories. Graduate students, in particular, have helped me see surveillance culture in broader ways than I originally envisioned. And what can I say to those who actually read drafts of the book – sometimes returning to reread a new version? My thanks are heartfelt, to Kiyoshi Abe, Kirstie Ball, Maggie Berg, Amos Cohoe, Pablo Esteban Rodríguez, Kevin Haggerty, Gary Marx, Lucas Melgaço, Torin Monahan, Mike Nellis, Midori Ogasawara, Brittany Shales, Emily Smith, Val Steeves, John Thompson and Daniel Trottier. Mary Savigar and Ellen MacDonald-Kramer at Polity, plus two anonymous readers, also directed me to rethink some aspects of the book. All their insights were invaluable to me; how I used them is entirely my responsibility, of course. The steady background work of Emily Smith and Joan Sharpe at the Surveillance Studies Centre also enables such endeavours as this to flourish. I am grateful too to Ann Bone for copy-editing and to Jean Whitaker, who kindly made the index.

Over the past few years several kind people have invited me to speak on surveillance culture and this has led to worthwhile conversations, critical comments and encouragement to persist with the project. As far back as 2010, Tom Lauer and Albert Meehan brought me to speak in their SurPriSe programme at Oakland University. I discussed ‘Facebook and Homeland Security’. In 2012, Gavin Smith, now at Australian National University, invited me to lecture for ‘Sydney Ideas’, recorded for ABC and online. A variant, ‘The emerging surveillance culture’, appears in André Jansson and Miyase Christensen, eds, Media, Surveillance, Identity (New York: Peter Lang, 2014). Parts of chapter 3 began life when Jack Qiu invited me to address a conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which appears in Francis L. F. Lee, Louis Leung, Jack Linchuan Qiu and Donna S. C. Chu, eds, Frontiers in New Media Research (London: Routledge, 2012). I gave a TEDx Queen’s talk on ‘Social media surveillance’ in 2013, and in 2014 spoke at the Wolfe Institute, Brooklyn College, New York on ‘The Circle and surveillance culture’, which later morphed into chapter 5. Pablo Esteban Rodríguez invited me to speak at LAVITS, the Latin American Surveillance Studies Network, in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2016, where my topic resembled ‘Surveillance culture: engagement, exposure, and ethics in digital modernity’, which appeared in the International Journal of Communication 11 (2017).

Kingston, Ontario