Jeremy W's Blog Critique

For my blog critique I read the article, "Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life" by David Lyon. The article talks about how surveillance has increased greatly, especially in countries located north of the equator. Lyon acknowledges that surveillance in and of itself has been around forever, but claims that systematic surveillance is becoming a routine part of people's lives. He also talk about how these methods of surveillance are relying now on Information and Communication Technologies more than ever, and this allows them to be even more intrusive into people's lives. The secretive methods usually taken also make surveillance hard to track and analyze.

I thought that Lyon's article, though written in 2009, is especially prudent today. With the NSA and all the revelations coming out of Edward Snowden, it is clear that Lyon predicted only the tip of the iceberg. To not have discovered the NSA's activities for so long is also just proof of the truth in Lyon's point that surveillance is not only becoming more common, but also harder to identify and analyze.

David Lyon is still alive today and lives in Kingston, Ontario. He is a professor of Sociology and works at Queens University in Ontario. He has a PhD in Social Science and History, and is interested in the driving forces behind and social consequences of some major transformations of the modern world.