Philip E. Agre
Encyclopedia
Philip E. Agre is a former associate professor of information studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...

. His new media writing includes the essay, Surveillance and Capture.
He was successively the publisher of The Network Observer (TNO) and The Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). TNO ran from January 1994 until July 1996. RRE, an influential mailing list he started in the mid-1990s, ran for around a decade. A mix of news, Internet policy and politics, RRE served as a model for many of today's political blogs and online newsletters.

Prior to his teaching position at UCLA, Agre held faculty positions at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences (now the School of Informatics) at the University of Sussex
University of Sussex
The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....

 and the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...

. He received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT in 1989.

Agre went missing on October 16, 2009, but was found in good health on January 16, 2010.

Background

Agre's essay Surveillance and Capture deals with privacy and surveillance issues made possible by our constantly evolving technological age. Influential works preceding this essay include George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's 1984, Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Hans Magnus Enzensberger , is a German author, poet, translator, and editor. He has also written under the pseudonym Andreas Thalmayr. He lives in Munich.- Life :...

's Constituents of a Theory of the Media, and Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...

's works surrounding the concept of panopticism
Panopticism
Panopticism is a social theory originally developed by French philosopher Michel Foucault in his book, Discipline and Punish.-Background:...

.

Enzensberger dismisses Orwell's vision of total surveillance as fantasy, claiming that the technological systems required would be impractical and, of necessity, "become the largest branch of industry in its society."

Foucault, however, challenges this impracticality claim with his notion of panopticism. Panopticism derives its name from the panopticon
Panopticon
The Panopticon is a type of building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe all inmates of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched...

, a thought experiment about prison design conceived by Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...

(before the advent of electronic surveillance systems). In essence, a panopticon consists of a central guard tower able to see every prison cell (aided by backlights), while no inmates are able to see within the tower. What results is a permanent, psychologically-ingrained power structure in which inmates are forced to monitor themselves, accepting the possibility that they may be watched at all times. Foucault argues that a constant exercise of such surveillance is not necessary, since its mere possibility induces self-restrained action among the inmates.

This surveillance model of privacy, present in Foucault's work, has been the dominant model for most discourse about privacy in the new media field. It fails, however, to fully address certain aspects of the technical elements of new media, including ways in which computers can provide effective privacy-enhancing technologies. In Surveillance and Capture, Agre presents the capture model, drawn from an awareness of the current methods of computer design. Just as the inmates of the panopticon internalize their surveillance and alter their behavior accordingly, so too do parties on the internet, knowing the possibilities of electronic information retrieval.

Disappearance

On October 16, 2009, a missing persons report was filed for Philip Agre. The report was filed by Agre's sister who indicated that she had not seen him since the Spring of 2008 and became concerned when she learned that he had abandoned his apartment and job sometime between December 2008 and May 2009. The notice indicated that Agre is, "a White Male, 49 years old, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He sometimes wears a full beard. He is 6'0" tall and 120 lbs. Agre suffers from manic depression. Agre is a former UCLA Professor." According to the updated UCLA-issued report, Agre was found by the LA County Sheriff's Department on January 16, 2010, and was deemed in good health and self-sufficient.
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