Results tagged “theguardian”

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Michael Dirda, in the New York Review of Books:

In contemporary America, as Jonathan Raban reminds us in Surveillance, any quest for anonymity—"to live obscurely" according to the Greek ideal for happiness—has grown increasingly difficult, if not impossible. And it's not only an Orwellian Big Brother who is watching. We track each other. We check out the backgrounds of friends, Saturday-night dates, and business associates; we data-mine and Google-search; when on line we worry about hackers, viruses, and identity theft. Schools and playgrounds are patrolled by guards, while spy cameras observe our children in the hallways and bathrooms. Only those who know the code can unlock the steel gates to our "planned communities." Amazon monitors our taste in books. Our cell phones take pictures and record conversations. People can't walk their dogs now without taking along their Blackberry or wearing their Bluetooth.

Raban's been interested in the democratization of surveillance for a while -- he has a list similar to Dirda's in an essay he wrote for The Guardian in 2006. He spoke about it on open Source in February.

About an hour ago, after learning of the existence of a new Jonathan Raban novel, we went straight to Elliott Bay Books to pick it up. The Guardian review is not unreservedly positive, but it doesn't really matter.