Writing and Domination at The Forces of Freedom Management Training Camp

I have been reading Vitia for years, first when he was a grad student in rhetoric, and now as he professes writing at The US Military Academy. Apparently, all the computers at the Academy are surveilled as they are in the best corporate practice as well. Vitia is writing a paper:

My proposed presentation poses as its problem the environment of pervasive computer-enabled surveillance at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The problem is both practical, in the labor and logistics associated with the ubiquitous application of technologies of surveillance, and ethical, in my concern that ubiquitous surveillance may inhibit the development of the risk-taking thinkers essential to the Army’s mission. The presentation theorizes possible responses, contrasting the writing of political philosopher Leo Strauss and Roman historian Gaius Cornelius Tacitus on writing and domination. Finally, the presentation offers suggestions for how those responses might be enacted at West Point, and possible implications for other institutions.

We will all learn how to write better in the years ahead, torturing language to extract as much as we can of the truth.

Comments

[JJ Commoner]

I seriously doubt that ubiquitous and pervasive electronic surveillance is practiced only at the US Military Academy. My somewhat informed guess is that it now happens almost everywhere where there are US gov't / defense interests, which means .. well, almost everywhere.

[Phil Cubeta]

Coupled with a chain of command, though, it would feel worse.