How long can surveillance theory ignore the implications of this? It seems entirely appropriate to add to the surveillance impetuses of the nation st… - David Lyon

But the term surveillance society does have connotations that at least hint at possible negative consequences, in ways that unambiguously optimistic talk of "information societies" and "knowledge-based economies" does not. My point is rather that such societies are in part constituted by a surveillance dimension.

Surveillance today is a means of sorting and classifying populations and not just of invading personal space or violating the privacy of individuals. In postmodernizing contexts surveillance is an increasingly powerful means of reinforcing social divisions, as the superpanoptic sort relentlessly screens, monitors and classifies to determine eligibility and access, to include and to exclude.

What a contrast with the lives of ordinary people at the start of twenty-first century! Today, everyday life is constantly monitored.