Various writers on information technology (IT), such as Dunlop & Kling and Bloomfield & Vurdubakis, have cautioned against simplistic deterministic views of the IT/society relationship, arguing such views compromise the ability for broader social participation in the future social shaping of IT. Popular/academic presentations of the surveillance debate -- a sample of which will be available at the conference -- show a tendency for privacy to be seen as a reified pure entity and surveillance technologies to be seen as a form of 'pollution taboo' (Mary Douglas). Such interpretations risk masking the social processes involved in both the setting of the boundaries between the social and technical, in defining surveillance technologies, and also the social processes involved in defining the public and private, i.e. privacy.

Participants at the conference were invited to consider whether or not their own thinking succumbs to the determinist gambit and, in doing so, facilitate critique ahead of policy action.