1. What is infopolitics?

Nearly all of us have a vague sense that something is wrong with the new regimes of data surveillance, it is difficult for us to specify exactly what is happening and why it raises serious concern, let alone what we might do about it. Our confusion is a sign that we need a new way of thinking about our informational milieu. What we need is a concept of infopolitics that would help us understand the increasingly dense ties between politics and information. Infopolitics encompasses not only traditional state surveillance and data surveillance, but also “data analytics” (the techniques that enable marketers at companies like Target to detect, for instance, if you are pregnant), digital rights movements (promoted by organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation), online-only crypto-currencies (like Bitcoin or Litecoin), algorithmic finance (like automated micro-trading) and digital property disputes (from peer-to-peer file sharing to property claims in the virtual world of Second Life). These are only the tip of an enormous iceberg that is drifting we know not where.

2. What are three things that we might encounter in daily life that we may not realize could be affected by infopolitics?

Just restricting this question to the medical context I would say: the body, the body, the body.  There is a tendency today, especially in philosophy, of thinking about the body as something like the 'ultimate ground' of human existence. But the body too is a site on which technologies and politics do their work.  Our bodies are deeply invested by information. Ask anyone to give a description of their body, and chances are they will relay an image of themselves in 'informatic' terms.  I do not just mean that they will convey information to you simply in virtue of speaking (which would always be the case). I mean rather that they are likely to relay to you data about their body by reference to standard metrics for height and weight, proneness to particular diagnostic categories, perhaps even racial categories. There is no need to take this to the extreme and claim, as some might, that bodies are nothing but information. What is of interest is really just the surprising extent to which even our bodies have become sites of informatic investment. There has been a long history of investing bodies as correlates of epidemiological data, going back to the middle of the nineteenth century.  What is of further interest today is how in context after context we are willing and able to see our bodies in similar ways such that these epidemiological correlates become almost unique personalized markers of our most essential self.

3. In the age of big data, so much seems information seems inconsequential—how quickly does it become consequential? (Is it a matter to by the time we realize it, it will be too late?)

Some would argue that in a context of information overload relevance replaces truth as the primary virtue of data. It used to be that it really mattered whether or not some piece of information was true.

That still matters today, of course, but it is much easier to take for granted. We are drowning in truths. How do we sort among them?  How do we figure out which ones matter most? Which truth? The premium placed upon relevance has something to do, I think, with the pre-eminence of search engine technology in the web context. Google is a poster-child for informationalization in the early 21st century because the core of their business is focused on relevance. Their question is: which of these many truths matters?

4. What can people do?  

I am not a prophet.  I don't know what the future will bring.  If I had to place my bets, it would be with people and organizations that take an activist role in some of the debates emerging out of infopolitics. These include organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology. But I also find the work of techno-radical groups like Anonymous interesting. But I don't have a recipe. If people want to do something, then they ought to involve themselves in the work of one of the many organizations that is drawing attention to these matters.  

5. A book is in the works?

My book on infopolitics won't be out for some time yet (at least a few years), but even when it is out it won't have an answer. Philosophers should not assume the mantle of telling people how to live—and that goes for all academics.  Finding out how to live and what to do has got to be a process that people undertake for themselves and in collaboration with others. If anything I've written helps anyone in doing this, then I would love to hear about it, but the help that I offer would not take the form of a directive or an instruction.