Academic

Simon on Surveillance & Virtual Worlds

By Lawrence Solum

Bart Simon (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University) has posted Playing with the Databased Self: Perfect Surveillance in the Age of Virtual Worlds on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

It?s a typical day in the operations center at Blizzard HQ. The supervisor walks in on regular shift. Shades of West World, intimations of NASA mission control ? rows of computer screens flash with data scrolling by in streams in front of hunched over operators typing, talking through mics and shouting at each other. At the front of a room a series of wall size monitors displaying a map of Azeroth, the world of warcraft. The fictional geography is irrelevant. This map represents a container of so many pixels of light? clustered together, moving about.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on July 01, 2009 (boomark / email).