ABSTRACT
The tension between two films, the 1994 film The Net and the 1991 film Until the End of the World says something about surveillance. We rely on surveillance technologies to hold things together and to provide the acceptable currencies of identity and eligibility. Yet the same technologies fail to provide a satisfactory account of our lives let alone infuse our relationships with a sense of meaningful interaction. What constructive new directions for theory are needed to make sense of surveillance today? Such questions have prompted a number of interesting and important studies showing how databases may be thought of as discourse or how surveillance has slipped into simulation mode. These take their cues from the work of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard rather than from more classical sociological sources. Four strands of surveillance theory may be distinguished, each profoundly connected with classic conceptions of modernity. The chapter also examines these post-modern strands.
