This project is an examination of how the history of encryption, code-breaking, and national security can be related to the body.  In addition to rediscovering the variety of bodies that have been used to produce and break codes going back to the first World War, there is also a more complicated history of how code has been used to make various bodies (especially the bodies of those who are outside the traditional story of individual genius and innovation) disappear.  Douglas Thomas advances the argument that it is the very disappearance of those bodies upon which the origins and enactment of national security depends.  

Douglas Thomas is an associate professor at USC Annenberg and chair of communication at the Iovine and Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation. His books include Hacker Culture, Cybercrime: Security and Surveillance in the Information Age (ed. with Brian Loader), Technological Visions: Hopes And Fears That Shape New Technologies (ed. with Marita Sturken and Sandra Ball-Rokeach) and A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change (with John Seely Brown).