MAGIC Speaker Series welcomes Jacob Silverman

Jacob Silverman is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Connection. A contributing editor for The Baffler, he has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and many other publications. He lives in New York."What Machines Know: Surveillance Anxiety and Digitizing the World"Abstract: I will discuss varying conceptions of privacy _ "personal privacy" versus "data privacy" _ and the changing relationship of the individual to authorities, especially those who control the data collection and analytic apparatus that represents a new form of power. Individuals are increasingly torn between untenable choices: joining social networks saturated with corporate and governmental surveillance, or opting out (however much is possible) and losing access to a semi-public space in which to exercise, and to confirm, one's own identity. Can we escape the inexorable grip of surveillance logic, which, with the crude certitude of code, enshrines market efficiency as the ultimate value? Or have we surrendered to what Marcuse called _a rationally organized bureaucracy, which is, however, invisible at its vital center"?