My friend and mentor Hans Kellner once told me that academic debts are many and varied, and over the years I’ve learned that he was certainly right. Many people have helped me along the path to this book: above all, Jeremy Packer has been a constant source of creativity and guidance. I am also enormously grateful for the generosity displayed by Chris Ingraham, Matt May, and Ethan Stoneman as they endured years of exhausting monologues on surveillance, communication, rhetoric, and violence. I owe special thanks to Mark Andrejevic, Vicki Gallagher, and Hans Kellner for their encouragement and guidance while this project was in its infancy. All of my colleagues at the University of Memphis—especially Tony de Velasco, Patrick Dillon, Leroy Dorsey, Joy Goldsmith, Rika Hudson, Marina Levina, and Camisha Smith—helped keep me sane and happy while this book took shape between 2013 and 2015. The ILL staff at the University of Memphis proved to be tremendous sleuths who repeatedly impressed me with their tenacity and success. I would also like to thank my old pal Adam Chandler of Cornell University Library for tracking down a number of archival documents that were crucial to this project. My anonymous reviewers were incredibly generous and insightful, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the challenges they set before me. Thanks, as well, to the staff at NYU Press, especially Alicia Nadkarni; it’s been a wild and joyful three years. And to all the friends whose work I learn from and whose company I enjoy—folks like Carole Blair, Jack Bratich, Fernanda Duarte, Rachel Dubrofsky, Dan Faltesek, David Gruber, Rachel Hall, Colin Hesse, Nate Hulsey, Jason Kalin, Ashley Kelly, Kelsy Kretschmer, Kate Maddalena, Torin Monahan, Alex Monea, Ned O’Gorman, Kathy Oswald, Ehren Pflugfelder, Chris Russill, Dawn Shepherd, Dan Sutko, and Ken Zagacki, just to name a few—I look forward to whatever comes next. To my new friends in the College of Liberal Arts at Oregon State University—especially Krystal Canales, Loril Chandler, Sally Gallagher, Lee Ann Garrison, Trischa Goodnow, Jeff Hale, Robert Iltis, Todd Kesterson, Bill Loges, Katrina Machorro, Elizabeth Root, Kim Rossi, Marion Rossi, and Gregg Walker—I would like to say thanks for making this such an interesting place to be. And finally: thanks to Surveillance & Society for providing an outlet for the very earliest iterations of this work. Small parts of the Introduction and Chapter One previously appeared in “If You See Something, Say Something: Lateral Surveillance and the Uses of Responsibility,” Surveillance & Society 10.3/4 (2012): 235–48.
I should also thank the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has trademarked the original title for this book (“If You See Something, Say Something”) and thus forced us to come up with a new title at the last minute. I like this one much better. And thanks, above all, for providing such a clear illustration of one of the book’s main themes: how the state regulates the communicative conduct of its citizens.
Fortunately, my personal debts are just as many and varied as my academic ones. Although I cannot begin to list them all here, at the very least I should thank all the family and friends who were sidelined during the years I worked on this book. Finally, my wife Leslie deserves the most credit of all. This book—like so many other things I work for and enjoy—would be impossible without her. So it is to Leslie, as well as to Austin, Annelie, Amelia, and Oliver, that I dedicate this book.