Tarek Fahmy: Cultural Critic

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Solove, D. (2006) The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age, New York: New York University Press

Gandy, O. (2006) “Data Mining, Surveillance, and Discrimination” in The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, eds. Haggerty, K. and Ericson R., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 363-84.

Clarke, R. (1988) “Information technology and dataveillance” in Communications of the ACM, 31(5), May 1988: 498-512. Cited in Lyon 2001, p.143

Journal of media Arts and Culture
Essay title: Surveillance Screens and Screening in Code 46
Written By: Peter marks
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Code 46 is a futuristic film starring Tim Robbins and directed by Michael Winterbottom (2003) that is set in a near future Utopic/Dystopic world where the ever present government controls it’s population via genetic and spatial surveillance. Via this surveillance, you are either IN or OUT. The INS live in the central city where comfort and affluence guides their lives. On the other hand, the OUTS live on the outside of the city in a dessert land that is harsh end even inhospitable.

“My focus here, Michael Winterbottom’s edgy 2003 film Code 46, examines new direction in and possibilities for surveillance that move beyond, or, in some senses, beneath that envisaged by Bentham, Orwell, or Foucalt. Humans are made up from 46 chromosomes, and as its title indicates, the film investigates the surveillance of DNA in a world complicated by recent advances in reproductive procedures. But it folds other, sometimes much more older surveillance practices and systems into the mix, as well as drawing on long established tropes and questions associated with Utopias. By integrating surveillance and Utopia, Code 46 fashions a provocative and alarming account of possible things to come”. (Peter marks 1993: p.2)

An intended Utopia relying heavily on differing types of surveillance becomes it’s worst enemy, a dystopia.
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How does this connect with my thesis idea? Devising a new customer level advertising that is more personal and heavily relies on extensive data mining?

Well, this from of ‘intimate’ advertising relies heavily on gathering, processing, and assessing of extensive data to determine the future/potential behavior of people. To beat people to the punch, sort of speak. This forecasting can be used to control the people as well and to also know there whereabouts 24/7.

On the other hand, it can be used to tailor the advertisements for each individual according to the data collected. It could make our lives easier and it could also allow marketers and corporations to streamline their messages/adverts individually.
With the advent of the internet, this type of marketing is no longer expensive.

According to Peter marks, “People are willing to endure surveillance if it ensures security and comfort; the price of utopia may be eternal vigilance.”

Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 24:4
Esaay Title: Cultural Stereotypes and Positioning Theory
Written By: Luk Van Langrnhove & Rom Harre
Written in 1994
Written from a Social Psychology persepctive

1. Cultural Stereotypes
• Concept of stereotyping was introduced to the field of psychology in 1922 by Lippman. He stressed that stereotyping is integral in the process of cognition since the world we live in is too complex to be viewed and perceived without stereotypes.
• Generally speaking, stereotypes are viewed as negative.

Within social psychology, stereotypes are generally viewed as:
• social/cultural: The consensus of the majority of a certain culture/generalized generalizations
OR
• personal/self: An opinion held by an individual/personal generalizations*
• Theories of stereotypes are broadly classified within these two opposing processes; the cultural and the personal.

Quotes from Essay:
• “…stereotypes have been thought of as distortions of reality.”***
• “Stereotyping people is almost inevitable because of its functional usefulness.”
• **”People are stereotypers”

II. Positioning Theory
Positioning theory declares that context is everything, especially when dealing with stereotypes. This theory could be compared to a marketing term called….”product positioning” where the marketers adopts a certain stance for the product so it could compete in the market. In society, there are broad, general, and archetypal positions where people adopt when interacting with each other.

For example, in high school, ‘jocks’ positioned themselves as athletes who are in shape where artists positioned themselves as talented picture makers that are not really into sports. In effect, positioning theories relies on generalized cultural stereotypes that are appropriated by an individual to portray themselves in a given society at a given time.

some common cultural positions:
• dominant
• submissive
• confident
• apologetic
• powerful
• powerless

positioning also is a personal affair, not only cultural.
A person could also combine 2 cultural positions and personalize them.
For example, I position myself as an artist that appreciates sports.

III. Stereotypes and Positions
Older theories of stereotypes usually don’t have that interplay of inside and outside; personal and cultural.

bgotsky, Harrk (1983) proposed that stereotypes are formed by a combination of moral and personal aspects.

Moreover, cultural stereotypes can become personal stereotypes and vice versa.

Conclusions
• Stereotypes are rules and practices within a certain culture that could be appropriated by the individual for use in certain conversations.
• Stereotypes are communal as well as individual, public as well as private.

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* Secord and Blackman (1964)
** Backman, (p. 20)
*** Langenhove & harry, (p. 361)

“God in his goodness sent the grape to cheer both great and small. Little fools will drink too much and great fools none at all.”