WILL STONE samples the 20th anniversary atmosphere of this eclectic end-of-season indie festival
Monitored: Business and Surveillance in a Time of Big Data
by Peter Bloom
(Pluto Press, £16.99)
THE panopticon, philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s unrealised design for a total institution, enabled a single unseen warder to observe its every inmate.
In Monitored, Peter Bloom explains that advances in surveillance technology are making all of us prisoners in the electronic equivalent of Bentham’s blueprint.
The greatest threat to democracy may no longer come from political parties but from unelected tech oligarchs like Peter Thiel and his powerful Silicon Valley network, argues JOHN GREEN
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an entertaining, useful guide to the threats and promises of mathematical rationality
Digital ID means the government could track anyone and then limit their speech, movements, finances — and it could get this all wrong, identifying the wrong people for the wrong reasons, as the numerous digital cockups so far demonstrate, warns DYLAN MURPHY


