Control and Freedom

Media scholar Wendy Hui Kyong Chun examines how freedom and control have become intertwined in present-day politics and technology. Her account follows the Internet's rise as a mass medium and shows how it came to be seen as both a space of limitless liberty and a tool of total surveillance. Chun contends that both views grow from a habit of turning political questions into technical ones, so that social conflicts appear to be problems that engineering can solve.