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Since the late nineteenth century, a common response to military defeat has been for the vanquished to appropriate modern technologies while interpreting them in terms of longstanding cultural ideals (see Wolfgang Schivelbusch's The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery [2003]). After humiliating collapse in World War II, postwar France undertook a vast set of engineering projects to reconstruct and modernize the nation, not only for practical purposes but also for compelling displays of renewed national glory.

Visiting the Jail February 4, 1996, to October 9, 1997 -- That Night -- Looking Back -- That First Week -- That First Month -- That Spring -- That Summer -- That Fall, the Holidays, and Another Year Begins -- Partings -- Visiting the Prisons October 10, 1997, to May 28, 2012 -- Transition -- Prison for Real -- Opportunities Lost -- The Penitentiary -- The Dark Shadow -- Still Standing -- Illness and Death -- Secrets -- Sunday Dinners -- Too Much Freedom? -- Risky Relationships -- Home Visits -- The Prison after Prison May 29, 2012, to December 1, 2014 -- Parole -- After Parole -- Free at Last -- Afterword and Acknowledgments.

Introductory observations, personal and otherwise -- Gunfire at sea : a case study of innovation -- Data processing in a bureau drawer -- The pertinence of the past in computing the future -- A little more on the computer -- Men and machinery -- Almost the greatest invention -- Some proposals

This paper is concerned with everyday data practices, considering how people record data produced through self-monitoring. The analysis unpacks the relationships between taking a measure, and making and reviewing records. The paper is based on an interview study with people who monitor their blood pressure and/or body mass index/weight. Animated by discussions of 'data power' which are, in part, predicated on the flow and aggregation of data, we aim to extend important work concerning the everyday constitution of digital data. In the paper, we adopt and develop the idea of curation as a theory of attention. We introduce the idea of discerning work to characterise the skilful judgements people make about which readings they record, how readings are presented, and about the records they retain and those they discard. We suggest self-monitoring produces partial data, both in the sense that it embodies these judgements, and also because monitoring might be conducted intermittently. We also extend previous analyses by exploring the broad set of materials, digital and analogue, networked and not networked, involved in record keeping to consider the different ways these contributed to regulating attention to self-monitoring. By paying attention to which data is recorded and the occasions when data is not recorded, as well as the ways data is recorded, the research provides specificity to the different ways in which self-monitoring data may or may not flow or contribute to big data sets. We argue that ultimately our analysis contributes to nuancing our understanding of 'data power'.

Underlying the current dynamics of technological developments, their divergence or convergence and the abundance of options, promises and risks they contain, is the quest for innovation, the contributors to this volume argue. The seemingly insatiable demand for novelty coincides with the rise of modern science and the onset of modernity in Western societies. Never before has the Baconian dream been so close to becoming reality: wrapped into a globalizing capitalism that seeks ever expanding markets for new products, artifacts and designs and new processes that lead to gains in efficiency, productivity and profit. However, approaching these developments through a wider historical and cultural perspectives, means to raise questions about the plurality of cultures, the interaction between "hardware" and "software" and about the nature of the interfaces where technology meets with economic, social, legal, historical constraints and opportunities. The authors come to the conclusion that inside a seemingly homogenous package and a seemingly universal quest for innovation many differences remain