Kelly Gates. 
Associate Professor of Communication.

University of California, San Diego.

"Surveillance has proliferated. Now we have surveillance everywhere."

With the rapid world of technology, the private world is slowly becoming more and more public. In her seminar “Someone Is Watching You: Surveillance in the New Media Environment,” Kelly Gates, Associate Professor in Communication at UCSD, addresses this issue of surveillance. Her research focuses on digital media technologies, especially the political and social implications of computerization in the U.S. from the mid-1900s to the present.

Gates became interested in surveillance due to the contradictory role of the police. Growing up in a policeman home, she has gotten to observe the various roles played by the police, which have led her to video forensics. Her current project involves investigating the emerging professional field of video forensics and the technologies these professionals use to examine video forensics. She explores the ways that these technologies are changing modern investigatory and evidentiary, and how the professionals transform into a sort of cyborg, using these technologies as an extension of their senses to see.

At UCSD, Gates teaches courses on the Internet and society, the cultural history of photography and visual culture, the history of communication research, and surveillance and the risk society. She has recently published her book, Our Biometric Future: Facial Recognition Technology and the Culture of Surveillance, Kelly Gates focusing on the automation of surveillance. She has also edited The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, Volume 6: Media Studies Futures with Angharad N. Valdivia (2013).