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Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century: A summer course
By Rosie Perera | April 15, 2012 at 1:54 am
Here’s a plug for a week-long summer class at Regent College June 25-29, called “Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century.” It’s taught by David Lyon, Professor of Sociology at Queen’s University in Ontario, and this is his primary area of expertise. He’s taught many times before at Regent, and I’ve really appreciated his laid-back style and yet deep wisdom as I’ve gotten to know him as a friend over the years. Vancouver is awesome in the summer, and Regent Summer School offers some of the sorts of classes you’d never get at another seminary. This one is right up there in addressing issues we face in our daily lives, and helping us to think about them as Christians.
Here’s the course description: “Personal data are vital to organizations today. Gathering and processing such data—whether images from cameras, details from credit cards, or information from ID documents—is surveillance. Supposedly innocent data are now highly valued by corporations (think of Amazon, Google, or Facebook) and avidly sought by police and intelligence services. This has real-world consequences for ordinary people, enlarging or limiting their opportunities, access, and life-chances. This course examines some of the questions about technology, organizations, and ethics that the topic of surveillance raises. How did the culture of surveillance develop? How should Christians treat their personal data and those of others? What are the benefits, consequences, and limits of surveillance? You will have the chance to consider your own ‘data practices’ and to contribute to one of society’s most pressing problems in an informed and Christian manner.”
Here’s a preliminary syllabus.
DAVID LYON
Professor of Sociology, Queen’s University, ON
BSc, PhD (Bradford University, UK)
David Lyon is the Principal Investigator of The New Transparency Project, and Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre at Queen’s University. His books include Identifying Citizens: ID Cards as Surveillance, and Surveillance Studies: An Overview. In 2008 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.
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