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And a Drone Shall Be the Sign

February 22, 2020 by Museum Fatigue

A few weeks back when the COVID-19 Coronavirus really hit the news, I was fascinated to see an outbreak in the news of drone stories coming from China. Over the past few years the drone has become a kind of, pardon the pun, a floating signifier for all that is rational, automated and “unmanned” about modernity in China. Never mind that drones loaded with disinfectant chemicals flying around “fighting the Coronavirus” are of limited value and probably not too good for […]

Categories: Surveillance • Tags: Coronavirus, COVID-19, drones

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“Scan & Go” at Watson’s: Checking Out on the Sales Floor

January 24, 2019 by Museum Fatigue

Yesterday for the first time I experienced a retail store employee as a “checkout point.” I visited a nearby Watson’s store to buy a pack of Bandaids and when I went to the cashier’s counter to pay for my purchase, I noticed a sign that said, “Scan & Go” in English and Chinese. I was a bit mystified because for most of the past two years I always pay with things by “scanning and going”—pulling out my phone, opening Alipay, […]

Categories: Digital Payments, Retail, Surveillance, Technology • Tags: Alipay, WeChat

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Every Wall Has a Hole: Utopian Strategies, Everyday Tactics

October 24, 2018 by Museum Fatigue

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about the implementation of surveillance technology and “social credit” in China—variously described in the Western press as “dystopian,” the work of a “digital dictatorship,” “high tech authoritarianism,” or a “surveillance technostate,” Regardless of the terms used, the implication is that the system the Chinese government is building looks to be right out of the pages of a Western SF novel—1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, We—or the BBC television show Black Mirror. While traveling in China, being […]

Categories: Surveillance, Utopian Gestures, Utopias and Dystopias • Tags: distopia, making do, social credit, surveillance, tactics and strategies, Utopia

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When Good Means Failing: Resisting Corporate Satisfaction Surveys

August 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This morning before checking out of our hotel, I noticed a letter on the desk in the room. The letter, written by the local hotel’s General Manager, mentioned that we might be receiving a satisfaction survey from corporate Best Western by email within a few weeks. The letter encouraged us to be sure and be “extremely satisfied” with our stay. In fact, if we weren’t extremely satisfied, the letter entreated us to contact the general manager directly by email or […]

Categories: Consumption, Corporate Culture, Discipline, Surveillance • Tags: Best Western, customer satisfaction, hotels, service industry, surveys

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Gold, DVDs, Surveillance Cameras and Meat: Supplies for the End Times

August 7, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: End of Times, Surveillance • Tags: apocalypse, cameras, DVD, food, gold

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Anti-Cheating Posters on Chinese University Campus

June 26, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

A few days ago I just happened to be visiting a university campus in the outskirts of Shanghai during the beginning of finals week. Along one wall in the lobby of the teaching building I noted a number of very interesting posters discouraging cheating on tests. Done in different styles they all had a singular message—don’t cheat on your finals. I imagined how a similar set of posters posted on an American campus would be received by students taking tests […]

Categories: Education, Surveillance • Tags: cheating, China, final exam, posters, testing

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Museum Fatigue Reads, April 12, 2014

April 12, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

香港將於33年後毀滅 Hong Kong will be destroyed after 33 years Tiananmen Conference 2014: Keeping the Memory Alive at Harvard Say Goodbye to ‘Peaceful Unification’           Medicinal Soft Drinks and Coca-Cola Fiends: The Toxic History of Soda Pop Jail House Recipes: Prison Cuizine Jennifer 8 Lee: The Hunt For General Tso   Ephemera: Ethics of the Brand Why We’re in a New Gilded Age                           Aral: Fishing […]

Categories: Food, Surveillance • Tags: Aral Sea, brands, Coca-Cola, Hong Kong, Peaceful Unification, recipies, Science Fiction, storytelling, surveillance, Taiwan, Tiananamen, Tiananmen Conference, Windows XP

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Facebook’s Tiers of Selling Your Information

January 28, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“If you aren’t paying for the product, you’re the product” never really made much concrete sense until this morning. The folks over at Boing Boing posted an image from @TheBakeryLDN illustrating what companies know when customers login to their services via Facebook. I suppose much of this could be expected, I posted about the increasingly insistent and irritating way that Facebook tells me it wants my data a few months ago (“The Facebook Database Must Be Fed”) complete with Little […]

Categories: Bodies, Privacy, Surveillance • Tags: digital double, Facebook, Privacy, Social Media

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Surveillance Graffiti

January 8, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Photo Essays, Public Art, Surveillance • Tags: graffiti, Morocco

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What Weibo Wipes: A Collection of Censored Images

November 17, 2013 by Museum Fatigue

Sometime this last week a colleague shared a link to a very interesting collection of images erased from the Weibo microblogging website (“China’s Twitter”). The collection is being made by ProPublica and also includes some very interesting related articles about online censorship in China, such as “How to Get Censored on China’s Twitter.” I saved the link and didn’t really get a chance to look through it until last night. What an interesting collection it is—and most of the images have basic […]

Categories: China, Internet, Scripts, Surveillance, Visual Anthropology • Tags: censorship, censorship in China, ProPublica, social web, Weibo

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