Overview
Agre's most cited and arguably most important paper. It introduces the capture model as an alternative to the visual/surveillance model for understanding how information technology enables monitoring and control of human activity.
The paper contrasts two models: the surveillance model, rooted in visual metaphors and Foucauldian analysis of the Panopticon, and the capture model, based on the restructuring of activities through the imposition of "grammars of action" that make human practices computationally tractable.
Key Arguments
To be developed with close reading of the text.
Reception and Legacy
The paper has been widely cited in surveillance studies, privacy scholarship, and STS. Its central argument — that the dominant form of digital monitoring works through capture (restructuring activity) rather than surveillance (watching activity) — has proven remarkably prescient in the age of behavioral tracking, data collection, and platform capitalism.