Rocky Bottoms: Techno-Fallacies of an Age of Information

I am here to fight for truth, justice and the American way. --Superman 1978. This article uses a true fiction speech by Mr. Richard Rocky Bottoms to illustrate a number of background beliefs underlying contemporary perspectives on social control, borders and surveillance, and on technology more broa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International political sociology 2007-03, Vol.1 (1), p.83-110
Main Author: MARX, GARY T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Borders
Cultural Values
Information Society
Information Technology
Social Control
Social Justice
Surveillance
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:I am here to fight for truth, justice and the American way. --Superman 1978. This article uses a true fiction speech by Mr. Richard Rocky Bottoms to illustrate a number of background beliefs underlying contemporary perspectives on social control, borders and surveillance, and on technology more broadly. Rocky Bottoms exists only in the imagination, but the arguments he puts forth and the behavior he reflects are prevalent, and increasingly dominant, in the post-9/11 cultures of industrial nations. His speech is a composite of remarks, many of them direct quotes, that I have gathered as part of a research project on surveillance over several decades. The speech is critically analyzed in light of 38 techno-fallacies of the information age. The fallacies identified may involve empirical, logical, or value dimensions. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:1749-5679
1749-5687
DOI:10.1111/j.1749-5687.2007.00006.x