Theories of the Information Society, Third Edition - Cryptome

INFORMATION, REFLEXIVITY AND SURVEILLANCE
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networks that are readily seen in most towns, and by replacing much self and
neighbourly provision with purchasable goods and services.
One major consequence of these trends, which amount to what has been
called the ‘incorporation of society’ (Trachtenberg, 1982), is that they pose challenges
for managers which, in order to be met effectively, rely upon sound
intelligence being gathered. In short, surveillance of much more than the shop
floor is nowadays a requirement of effective corporate activity. There are many
dimensions of this, ranging from monitoring of currency fluctuations to political
circumstances in host nations, but here I would centre on the development of
surveillance of customers.
The expansion of market research, both within and without corporations, is
an index of management’s need to know its clientele. Its methods of accessing
the public are variable, including survey and interview materials, commissioned
public opinion trawls and careful pre-testing of goods prior to launch and, indeed,
during their design and development; they are becoming increasingly sophisticated
as market researchers endeavour to find out more about the ‘lifestyles’ of
potential and actual customers (Martin, 1992). Wal-Mart, for instance, ‘amasses
more data about the products it sells and its shoppers’ buying habits than anyone
else’, checking some 100 million customers each week in ways that provide
‘access to information about a broad slice of America’ (Hays, 2004). This information
extends from social security and drivers’ licence numbers to aggregated
data about shopping habits (that can be extraordinarily revealing about personal
and intimate life). This contributes towards Wal-Mart being enormously successful
as a retailer, but it also creates huge databases on who buys what, where,
when and how often.
A close cousin of such surveillance is credit-checking agencies which, as well
as enquiring about the financial standing of customers, often generate address
lists of possible buyers for their corporate clients. The area within which they
operate is somewhat clouded, but most readers will have received unsolicited
post from companies which have bought their addresses from another organisation.
The reasoning is simple: if a golf club has a membership list, then this
information is very useful to corporations which, say, specialise in golfing holidays
or, more broadly, in sports clothing. Purchase of the database is a cheap
way of gaining access to previously monitored people.
It is important to take cognisance of the heightening of this surveillance that
has accompanied the spread of versatile electronic technologies. David Burnham
(1983) alerted us to the phenomenon of ‘transactional information’ years ago, and
it is one with special pertinence for contemporary surveillance. This is a ‘category
of information that automatically documents the daily lives of almost every
person’ (p. 51) as they pick up the phone, cash a cheque, use a credit card, buy
some groceries, hire a car or even switch on a cable television set. Transactional
information is that which is recorded routinely in the course of everyday activities.
It is constructed with scarcely a thought (and frequently automatically,
at the flick of a switch, or the dialling of a telephone number). However, when
this ordinary, everyday information comes to be aggregated, it gives corporations
quite detailed pictures of clients’ lifestyles – e.g. who, when and for how
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