Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance

Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance

by Kelly A. Gates
ISBN-10:
0814732097
ISBN-13:
9780814732090
Pub. Date:
01/23/2011
Publisher:
New York University Press
ISBN-10:
0814732097
ISBN-13:
9780814732090
Pub. Date:
01/23/2011
Publisher:
New York University Press
Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance

Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance

by Kelly A. Gates

Hardcover

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Overview

Since the 1960s, a significant effort has been underway to program computers to “see” the human face—to develop automated systems for identifying faces and distinguishing them from one another—commonly known as Facial Recognition Technology. While computer scientists are developing FRT in order to design more intelligent and interactive machines, businesses and states agencies view the technology as uniquely suited for “smart” surveillance—systems that automate the labor of monitoring in order to increase their efficacy and spread their reach.
Tracking this technological pursuit, Our Biometric Future identifies FRT as a prime example of the failed technocratic approach to governance, where new technologies are pursued as shortsighted solutions to complex social problems. Culling news stories, press releases, policy statements, PR kits and other materials, Kelly Gates provides evidence that, instead of providing more security for more people, the pursuit of FRT is being driven by the priorities of corporations, law enforcement and state security agencies, all convinced of the technology’s necessity and unhindered by its complicated and potentially destructive social consequences. By focusing on the politics of developing and deploying these technologies, Our Biometric Future argues not for the inevitability of a particular technological future, but for its profound contingency and contestability.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814732090
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 01/23/2011
Series: Critical Cultural Communication , #2
Pages: 274
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kelly A. Gates is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance (2011), as well as the editor of International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Vol. 6: Media Studies Futures (2013) and The New Media of Surveillance (2009). Her writing has appeared in numerous journals, including Surveillance & Society, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and Social Semiotics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 “Self-Motivating Exhilaration”: On the Cultural Sources of Computer Communication
2 Romanticism and the Machine: The Formation of the Computer Counterculture
3 Missing the Net: The 1980s, Microcomputers, and the Rise of Neoliberalism
4 Networks and the Social Imagination
5 The Moment of Wired
6 Open Source, the Expressive Programmer, and the Problem of Property
Conclusion: Capitalism, Passions, Democracy
Notes Index
About the Author

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