The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. His latest works are Who Killed Canadian History?, Who Killed
the Canadian Military, and Hell’s Cor

Academic conferences and the books they generate are a growth industry.
Sometimes, if the organizers are clever and tough-minded, the papers
will be written in prose rather than jargon, and when that happens there
is the possibility that governments, the media, and the public will be
influenced by what serious thinkers say. All too often, however,
academic papers are delivered and published in a jargon that is designed
to obscure rather than elucidate.

Somehow, one might have expected a book on the increasing degree of
surveillance in our society to be clear and compelling. Not so. This
book, based on a conference at Green College of the University of
British Columbia in May 2003, has 15 papers, and only one (by one of the
editors) is written in truly accessible prose. In varying degrees, the
others, while looking at important subjects, are not. What does “9/11,
Synopticon, and Scopophilia” convey to you? “Surveillant Internet
Technologies and the Growth in Information Capitalism”? The new age of
surveillance is crucially important and has real implications for the
way democracies will function today and in the future. Specialists with
interesting and novel points of view should be helping to make policy.
Not with this unreadable book, however.