Synopses & Reviews
Who among us hasn't eavesdropped on a stranger's conversation in a theater or restaurant? Indeed, scientists have found that even animals eavesdrop on the calls and cries of others. In Eavesdropping, John Locke provides the first serious look at this virtually universal phenomenon. Locke's entertaining and disturbing account explores everything from sixteenth-century voyeurism to Hitchcock's Rear Window; from chimpanzee behavior to Parisian café society; from private eyes to Facebook and Twitter. He uncovers the biological drive behind the behavior and highlights its consequences across history and cultures. Eavesdropping can be a good thing — an attempt to understand what goes on in the lives of others so as to know better how to live one's own. Even birds who listen in on the calls of distant animals tend to survive longer. But Locke also concedes that eavesdropping has a bad name. It can encompass cheating to get unfair advantage, espionage to uncover secrets, and secretly monitoring emails to maintain power over employees. In the age of CCTV, phone tapping, and computer hacking, this is eye-opening reading.
Review
"Compelling."--Sukhdev Sandhu, Telegraph
About the Author
John Locke is Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at Lehman College, City University of New York.
Table of Contents
1. Passionate Spectators
2. Under the Leaves
3. Open Plan
4. Reluctant Domestication
5. Privacy, Intimacy, and the Selves
6. Personal Power and Social Control
7. What Will the Servants Say?
8. Passionate Exhibitors
9. Virtual Eaves
10. Intimacy by Theft
Notes
Reference
Index
Exclusive Essay
Read an exclusive essay by John L. Locke