Ubiquitous Computing and the Digital Enclosure Movement

Abstract

Popular portrayals of ubiquitous computing tend to downplay the surveillance implications of emerging forms of mobile, networked interactivity. This essay seeks to supplement such accounts with a critical analysis of the emergence of digital enclosures that limit access to interactive networks and services to those who ‘freely’ submit to increasingly comprehensive forms of monitoring. If land enclosure helped produce the spatial conditions for the exploitation of wage labor, digital enclosures enable the exploitation of information generated by users as they go about their daily lives. Describing interactive networks, in both virtual and physical spaces, as forms of spatial enclosure helps to supplement privacy-based critiques of surveillance with questions about the ownership and control of data collected within the enclosure.