Welcome To The Machine: Science, Surveiilance, and Culture of Control

by Derrick Jensen, George Draffan
Chelsea Green Publishing Company (September, 2004)
304 pages
Translation: Anthony Arnove (via BMSR para Brasil e Portugal)

Foreign Rights sold:
Korean / Hankereh Newspaper Company

Book description:
Have you heard that Wal-Mart is pioneering a new technology by imbedding machine-readable identity chips in its products? If you’ve ever used an internet search engine to look up information on new technology, then an article on the ID chips was probably waiting for you on your home page. Your machine just thought you might be interested.
It’s no secret that the seemingly innocuous information you type into internet search engines does not disappear when you shut down your computer. Instead, it joins your credit history, social security number, and tax records in the Machine. "Welcome," say veteran cultural critics Derrick Jensen and George Draffan, in their new book, Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance and the Culture of Control, to be published in September, 2004.

Jensen and Draffan, who teamed up in 2003 to expose industrial corruption and destruction in Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests, are back to reveal both the terrifying extent of surveillance and our chilling complacency at the loss of everything from consumer privacy to civil liberties. In this timely and important new collaboration, Jensen and Draffan take on all aspects of Control Culture: everything from the government’s policy of total information awareness to a disturbing new technology where soldiers can be given medication to prevent them from feeling fear. They write about pharmaceutical packaging that reports consumer information, which is then used to send targeted drug advertisements directly to your TV.

As Jensen and Draffan uncover more and more disturbing information about the ability and application of machines to track our habits and undermine our feelings, they remind us again and again that this book is not science fiction; that they are not making this up. From bioweapons to super soldiers, they demonstrate the frightening reality of technology’s potential.

If the prospect of perpetual surveillance and psychological warfare alarms you, you are not alone. Most people would be disturbed if you told them that everything from their store purchases to their public transit rides are recorded and filed for government or corporate access. But more often than not, the smooth, silent cleanliness of its operation allows the Machine of Western Civilization to go unnoticed. In Welcome to the Machine, Jensen and Draffan draw our attention back to its eerie, persistent white noise and take a cold, hard, human look at the cultural conditions that have led us to all but surrender to its hum.

Welcome to the Machine is a Politics of the Living book, one of a series of hard-hitting works exposing the global government and corporate assault on life. Derrick Jensen is also the author of Walking on Water, A Language Older than Words, and The Culture of Make Believe, which was one of two finalists for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. George Draffan is the author of The Elite Consensus, A Primer on Corporate Power, and co-author with Jensen of Strangely Like War and Railroads & Clearcuts. Both Jensen and Draffan are watching you right now.


About the Author

Derrick Jensen is the author of Walking on Water, The Culture of Make Believe, A Language Older than Words, and Listening to the Land. He is the coauthor of Strangely Like War and Railroads and Clearcuts. The Culture of Make Believe was one of two finalists for the 2003 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize.
George Draffan is a forest activist, public interest investigator, and corporate muckraker. He is the author of The Elite Consensus: When Corporations Wield the Constitution and the coauthor of Strangely Like War and Railroads and Clearcuts. His work can be found at the Public Information Network Web site, www.endgame.org.
Welcome to the Machine is part of the “Politics of the Living” series, a collection of hard-hitting works by major writers exposing the global governmental and corporate assault on life.