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Abstract
Two models of privacy issues are contrasted. The surveillance model employs visual metaphors (e.g., "Big Brother is watching") and derives from historical experiences of secret police surveillance. The less familiar capture model employs linguistic metaphors and has deep roots in the practices of applied computing through which human activities are systematically reorganized to allow computers to track them in real time. The capture model is discussed with reference to systems in numerous domains.
Key Arguments
Agre distinguishes between two fundamentally different frameworks for understanding privacy:
1. The Surveillance Model: Rooted in visual metaphors and the tradition of state surveillance. Invokes imagery of watching, oversight, and panoptic observation. Derives from political experiences with secret police and totalitarian surveillance states.
2. The Capture Model: Rooted in linguistic metaphors. Concerns the ways computing practices reorganize human activities into "grammars of action" -- formal representations that allow real-time computational tracking. This model is less visible than surveillance but potentially more pervasive, as it is embedded in the design of everyday computational systems.
Significance
This is one of Agre's most influential and widely cited works. It introduced the concept of "grammars of action" and the "capture model" as a framework for understanding how computational systems restructure human activity to make it legible to machines. The paper is foundational to surveillance studies, critical data studies, and science and technology studies (STS).