Importance and Conclusion

This collection of studies presented in Privacy Matters provides a diversity of insight into how systems of surveillance infiltrate every aspect of our daily lives through data-brokerage systems that we all engage with when we participate in the use of online services that are a requirement for interaction and survival in today’s net-centric society. Such insights give readers a commodity of information and resources with which they can use to understand how systems of surveillance inexplicitly commandeer and utilize user data; combat systems of social hierarchical oppression; redefine the ways online social systems restrict people’s habits, bodies, and lived experiences; and further contribute to starting a much-needed conversation regarding our awareness of surveillance systems and privacy. All of this contributes to Estee Beck and Les Hutchinson Campos’ goal in compiling this collection, in the hopes that it inspires readers to build upon this conversation and use such knowledge to make effective and positive change to the surveillance systems influencing our lives. 

As Privacy Matters acts as the beginning of an important conversation, I don’t find anything to critique about it as the book itself acknowledges its limitations in scope and research which provides its reasoning for asking readers to continue this conversation. In my personal studies, Privacy Matters not only provides me with the identification of an area of needed research that I am now interested in, but additionally gives me insight into aspects of surveillance’s influence over my own education, pedagogy, and life. Insight which I can use more effectively better the experiences of myself and those around me. Regarding scholars of rhetoric and composition as well as anyone else further studying the concepts discussed within Privacy Matters, this information similarly provides a wealth of interesting avenues to further our understanding of surveillance and its influence. In addition, it raises many questions regarding surveillance that expands the boundaries of our field and allows scholars to participate in interdisciplinary studies that might better the way all fields of study operate and exist within these systems. Finally, in consideration of society as a whole, Privacy Matters begins a fight against surveillance systems which perpetuate negative, discriminatory, and supremacist based social hierarchies that harm everyone in modern society. Be it perpetuating oppression of individuals or actively hurting minoritized communities or contributing to the disunification of all of humanity; the negative influences of many current surveillance systems reach the lives of everyone living and need to be resisted and redefined in order to better push human civilization forward. Less we risk being trapped and controlled by the very systems we use daily.