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Spy Plane: Inside Baltimore's Surveillance Experiment
304 pages, Hardcover
Published October 29, 2024
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October 14, 2025
Really enjoyed this ethnography of a tech company start-up contracted to perform advanced surveillance technologies for the Baltimore Police Department! A series of serendipitous events that coagulate into great research.
I find the focus on experimentation, rather than the "boomer/doomer hype cycle" discourse concerning surveillance technologies a compelling way to empirically ground our understanding and opinions regarding the present effects of surveillance technologies *right now*. While I definitely fall into the more doomer part of the discourse, I do appreciate highlighting the speculative character of tech start-ups and their products because it soothes a lot of the uncertainties regarding the development of technology more broadly. If the technology isn't working as advertised, how exactly does it work? And how do these technologies affect the present lives of the communities it experiments on? This really gives a lot more space to think through the logic of tech companies more broadly and how much of that drive towards speculation shapes much of our grasp on it.
I find the focus on experimentation, rather than the "boomer/doomer hype cycle" discourse concerning surveillance technologies a compelling way to empirically ground our understanding and opinions regarding the present effects of surveillance technologies *right now*. While I definitely fall into the more doomer part of the discourse, I do appreciate highlighting the speculative character of tech start-ups and their products because it soothes a lot of the uncertainties regarding the development of technology more broadly. If the technology isn't working as advertised, how exactly does it work? And how do these technologies affect the present lives of the communities it experiments on? This really gives a lot more space to think through the logic of tech companies more broadly and how much of that drive towards speculation shapes much of our grasp on it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review