Pixelated Semantics

A schizotypical inventory

Memories, memes, and the participatory panopticon

If notions of ubiquitous recording of one's activities have escaped one until now, there is a useful and provocative article on the "participatory pantopticon":

"The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham's 18th century model for a prison in which all inmates could be watched at all times. The term has in more recent years come to have a broader meaning, that of a world in which all of us are under constant surveillance [...]

But in the world of the participatory panopticon, this constant surveillance is done by the citizens themselves, and is done by choice. It's not imposed on us by a malevolent bureaucracy or faceless corporations. The participatory panopticon will be the emergent result of myriad independent rational decisions, a bottom-up version of the constantly watched society."

While the author recognises the positive value of the "notion of individual citizens keeping a technological eye" on authority (via reverse surveillance or "sousveillance"), attempts to balance the positives and negatives of "painful and seductive" technologies seem to be ahead of any demonstrated need for what is essentially artificial social memory management. The choice of Abu Grahib imagery to demonstrate "reverse surveillance" is particularly ill-chosen, as those images were taken not to expose abuse, but to celebrate it, an important distinction. And therein is one of the largest obstacles: there is no software in existence that can explain and predict human motivation with any accuracy. The self-contained opposition of "pain" and "seduction" has a particularly S & M evocation also, interesting in the context of the examples given.

Some of the main impetus for such technology has been from DARPA who, following adverse publicity, has cancelled their Lifelog project. MS's researchers however are developing the "participatory panopticon" vision with "MyLifeBits", a "lifetime store of everything".

Judging from the public ambivalence to these notions (from distracted by language - "panopticon is enough of a mouthful it might inhibit the meme", to concern at "the loss of any effective 'meat memory'"), its perhaps useful to recall that "participation" in self-surveillance is not a universal human need, and a quantum change in motivation is likely to be the first requirement for approaching acceptance of the notion.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 10:43 am ::