Data collection is everywhere. It happens overtly and behind the scenes. It is a specific moment of legal obligation, the point at which the purpose and conditions of the data are legitimised. But what does the term data collection mean? What does it say or not say? Does it really capture the extraction or imposition taking place? How do terms and practices relate in defining the norms of data in society? This article undertakes a critique of data collection using data feminism and a performative theory of privacy: as a resource, an objective discovery and an assumption. It also discusses alternative terms and the implications of how we describe practices of ' collecting' data. Issue 4This paper is part of Feminist data protection, a special issue of Internet Policy Review

Gamification has entrenched constant monitoring throughout society. From education to work to shopping, our activities are tracked, our progress is monitored, and rewards are meted out. But this enforced acceptance of constant surveillance constructs a social narrative in which privacy ceases to exist, and the technological tools at work can easily be shifted from reward to control. This is furthered through the shift from a Bentham–Foucault model of power and the threat of surveillance to the actualisation of complete protocological surveillance enabled by cloud computing, data centres, and machine learning. It is no longer the case that anything we do might be surveilled; we can be fairly certain that everything we do probably is being monitored, judged, and recorded. How can we negotiate these changing narratives? Of what fictions do we convince ourselves when we play the “game” called digital society? This article uses the work of Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Dave Eggers, and Ernest Cline to assess how fictionality can act as thought experiments for the social conditions of surveillance technologies. Through stories such as Halting State and Walkaway, we explore the collisions between the control-based society of tech companies and the disciplinary structures of traditional states—the points of tension between illusions of freedom, guided game paths, and the exercise of power over users’ data and behaviours. The article argues for expanding our perspectives on the reach of game analysis to the broader connected networks of cultural and political systems, to assess ways of responding to the idea that we are being played with, turned into characters in the gamified narratives of control-based surveillance societies.

As Arthur C. Clarke famously wrote, "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" [1]. Indeed, magic and technology have always been interwoven, their boundaries always blurred. It is notable that Thoth was the ancient god of both writing (arguably one of the greatest early technologies) and magic, suggesting a link between words, knowledge and power, and perhaps even the ability to (re)write reality. Building on this link, and following Lacan, Bard and Soderqvist assert that in contemporary society reality is only ever the illusion of reality [2]. The socio-economic structures of the information age are therefore cultural magic tricks which must be sustained by new power relations. Lacan himself linked cybernetics to the nature of language, with subjective boundaries appearing between presence and absence [3]. This recalls perhaps the most well-known magic trick, common to both mystical and practitioners and stage entertainers: making something appear and/or disappear, the act of concealing and revealing. With computer interfaces, and the hidden reality of code that exists within a computer, digital technologies have long been associated with magical processes [4]. Chesher outlines the concept of "invocational media" in which knowledge of specific words of power is required in order to invoke data with the correct command or call [5]. Nusselder describes the enchanting nature of the world that appears on screen as being a process by which humans can handle a reality that would otherwise remain inaccessible, hidden and unknowable [6]. If knowledge is power, then in digital technology this knowledge takes on an additional level of abstraction. Digital knowledge, as code is the invisible underpinning of reality, and knowing the correct words, gestures or commands enables control over this digital reality. The world order of the information age is based on our relative ability to make the hidden realm of digital data appear or disappear.The present technocracy in economic, political and cultural spheres has created a ruling "sorcerer" class, as if to fulfil and replace Plato's philosopher kings. Withholding knowledge to maintain control, and revealing displays of power at carefully chosen times, enacts the performance of digital society. Whether through algorithmically run stock markets or social media propaganda, today's rulers offer mystification through obfuscation, power through understanding, and influence through controlled revealing. Thus the manipulation of epistemological and perceptual constraints enacts a digital divide across all aspects of social, economic and even material reality. Our everyday lives have become embedded within the systems of a magical realm of technology that now controls our entire society. Against these structures of control, enter the digital artist. Clarke's second law states that "the only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible" [7]. The role of critical digital art is to stage the impossible...

This article addresses the problematic perspectives of drone culture. In critiquing focus on the drone's apparent 'autonomy', it argues that such devices function as part of a socio-technical network. They are relational parts of humanmachine interaction that, in our changing geopolitical realities, have a powerful influence on politics, reputation and warfare. Drawing on Žižek's conception of parallax, the article stresses the importance of culture and perception in forming the role of the drone in widening power asymmetries. It examines how perceptions of autonomy are evoked by drones, to claim that this misperception is a smokescreen that obscures the relational socio-technical realities of the drone. The article therefore argues that a more critical culture of the drone emerges by shifting the focus and perception from autonomy to anonymity. This allows us to engage more fully with the distributed agency and decision-making that define how drones are developed and deployed. Rather than focusing on the drone as a singular, fetishised, technical object, a relational approach to the drone assemblage is proposed that highlights the competing human interests that define and resist drones in global politics and culture.