ABSTRACT
Some of Anthony Giddens work throws light on the relationship between planning and control. In the modern nation, state allocative and authoritative control converge insofar as each comes to depend on the continuous, normalised, and increasingly centralised surveillance and monitoring of subject populations. This chapter explores dark underside of the Information Revolution, and to do this on the basis that serious, rather than just well-meaning, responses are only possible if people confront, not just the repressive potential of information and knowledge, but more significantly the integral and necessary relation between repressive and possible emancipatory dimensions. Importantly, Taylorism as a system of factory control does not depend on technological support: information gathering and surveillance do not depend to any large extent upon information technologies. The system of mass consumption (and the consumer society) is dependent upon the collection, aggregation, and dissemination of information. The growth of a 'programmed' market, of a regulated and coded consumer society, is a fundamentally cultural phenomenon.
