Canadian novelist and cultural critic Hal Niedzviecki will speak about his book The Peep Diaries: How We’re Learning to Love Watching Ourselves and Our Neighbors.

Niedzviecki  says we have entered the age of “Peep culture,” a tell-all, show-all, know-all digital phenomenon that is dramatically altering notions of privacy, individuality, security and even humanity. Peep culture is Reality TV, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, amateur porn, surveillance and more. To write the book, Niedzviecki dove into Peep culture, joining every social network that will have him, monitoring the movements of his wife, hiring private detective websites to investigate his father, and trying out for Reality TV.

Niedzviecki is the publisher and co-founder of the magazine Broken Pencil, a guide to underground arts and zine culture, and was the editor until 2002. He has written for Adbusters, Utne Reader, and The New York Times Magazine.

For more information, contact Robert Jensen, rjensen@austin.utexas.edu.

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