SPY-2-SPY [To Control One’s Environment is To Assert One’s Existence]
Within the present context of a postmodern technological society characterized by surveillance and information computer technologies, globalization and the mediation and commercialization of the cultural sphere, technics, the human experience of technology, is perhaps one of the most significant but least acknowledged challenges facing the human condition.
In the early days, Surveillance Studies were concerned primarily with revealing and discussing the negative implications of surveillance practices, such as their effects on the protection of civil liberties and rights. Notions and metaphors such as the Panopticon and Big Brother dominated the theoretical perspectives of the literature (Gandy, 1993; Lyon, 1994). Increasingly, students of surveillance came to consider the positive, caring aspects of surveillance as well. David Lyon (2002) among others has paid considerable attention to the protective, enabling powers of surveillance. Arguing that surveillance is Janus faced, Lyon added to the accounts of the controlling, constraining consequences of surveillance recognition of its enabling, caring features.
Undoubtedly, the recognition and understanding of the positive aspects of surveillance are still an underdeveloped area and thus a future challenge for the study of surveillance.
However, another direction in the development of Surveillance Studies would be to embrace the fun features and entertainment value of surveillance. Surveillance could be considered not just as positively protective, but even as a comical, playful, amusing, enjoyable practice (Marx, 1996).
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Ref. The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment, Anders ALbrechtslund and Lynsey Dubbeld.