Even before the NSA spying scandal, Zygmunt Bauman studied the contemporary surveillance society in collaboration with sociologist David Lyon, director of the Surveillance Studies Centre. In the digital age, no one could ever be sure they weren’t being monitored—leading to a kind of social conformity that is increasingly deliberate and voluntary, or so they concluded….
—RP#15 (Italics added)
R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
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That or we just assume most of the surveillance data kept on us at this point is being ignored as irrelevant to the civil government’s immediate concerns. If the latter is the case, the surveillance data is probably a great resource for a sociologist wanting to trend total depravity that was expressed under the assumption of anonymity. 😉
“…total depravity that was expressed under the assumption of anonymity.”
Indeed; and fooling ourselves that we can keep man from seeing our sins while certainly knowing that God sees all – but we don’t care. Wretched man that I am.