UPDATE: I got a long response from Cascio that I'm going to make another item.
Jamais Cascio at WorldChanging (the picture is by Howard Greenstein, and published on the blog item) has decided to dump heavily on the whole idea of the World of Always On by giving it the ear-splitting name of the Participatory Panopticon. (The speech was made a month ago, but it hit my RSS feed this morning.)
It's wildly over-the-top and based on the idea that any data you collect on yourself must mean Big Brother is Watching You. There's even the obligatory Abu Ghraib glory shot. (The guy on the box, not Lynndie England's smile.)
There are always dangers in technology. People die in traffic accidents. Most mass entertainment is bad for your mental health. If you play video games too much your thumbs will hurt.
But to condemn new technology because of the potential dangers if it's misused is Luddism at its worst.
The fact is that, where Always On technologies are concerned, we're all Big Brother. That is, we're monitoring ourselves, monitoring and controlling our own environments, finding our own stuff.
The key to making this work is, simply, Privacy Law. Data I create belongs to me. Data about me belongs to me. Data about your stuff, in the store, belongs to you, until I buy it and take it out of the store at which point the RFID chip, and its data, belong to me.
- My heart rate and blood pressure, designed to keep me from dieing in that next heart attack? It's mine. But I can share it with my doctor.
- The list of what's in my house? Mine, too. But I can share it with my alarm company. And if someone breaks in I want them sharing it with the police. An inventory of what's missing is a good thing.
Yes, I know, can't trust the government, government is evil, especially this government, I get it. Change the damned government.
Yes, I know. Big business is evil, big science is evil. Turn in your car and your flush toilet.
The best friends of business in this new era? EPIC and the ACLU. Because they will fight for the legal conditions we need to trust the technology.
The present government is the danger, their attitudes about technology and data are very dangerous, but the technology itself? Not dangerous.
It's a computer. It has no inherent values. It's a bunch of switches, on-off, they respond to programming. Don't confuse tools with jailers, please.
You're not doing our aging population any favors when you do that.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Jamais Cascio on June 8, 2005 04:19 PM writes...
Did you even read the article? It sure seems like you didn't. I know it was long, but if you're going to attack it, do so for good reasons (like the term) and not for things I didn't say.
It's not about the government.
It's not about Big Brother.
It's not about big business or big science being evil.
It's not about the developments I discuss being unmitigated problems or uniformly undesirable.
To quote from the very beginning of the article:
"This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching over your shoulder, nor will it be a world of a handful of corporate siblings training their ever-vigilant security cameras and tags on you. Such monitoring may well exist, probably will, in fact, but it will be overwhelmed by the millions of cameras and recorders in the hands of millions of Little Brothers and Little Sisters. We will carry with us the tools of our own transparency, and many, perhaps most, will do so willingly, even happily."
...and a few paragraphs later...
"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."
(Emphasis added, as you seem to have missed it the first time.)
Why do I link to the Abu Ghraib picture? Because I cite it as an example of how personal digital technology can be used to undermine overreaching government control. The whole article is about community and individual use of these observation and monitoring technologies for both good and bad uses, not about "Big Brother" or "damn government," and certainly not about knee-jerk Luddism.
(You know, I think this is the first time in my life I've been implicitly accused of being a Luddite. I am far more frequently accused of technophilia and "cheerleading" as on WorldChanging I tend to point towards technological advancements as positive tools for building a healthier, more democratic and more sustainable society.)
I'm sorry to go off like this, but this critique of the Participatory Panopticon speech/article is so wildly off-base that I'd hate to have anyone take it as an accurate depiction of the argument.
You want to say that the name is ungainly or awful? More power to you. There are undoubtedly more substantive problems with the concept, as well. But the piece has nothing to do with the government or big business monitoring and/or controlling our lives, and in no way is it a rant against technology.
Critique the piece for real weaknesses in the argument, not fundamentally inaccurate bogeymen.
Permalink to Comment2. Brad Hutchings on June 9, 2005 02:58 AM writes...
Privacy laws certainly do not work now as you describe (or suggest). Nor should they. Consider reputation, by far the most outwardly important data about you. It does not belong to you in the sense that it is something you can control at your whim, nor do the observed facts that create your reputation. Nor should they. Reputation, after all, is about how you interact with others, and of course is the sum of others' evaluations of those interactions. For some kinds of reputation, such as credit worthiness, we have laws that give you some rights to see, manage, and challenge certain kinds of data that others collect and report about you. But that data belongs to the companies that collect and organize the data, and is very valuable to them. It's valuable to us as individuals that others make the effort to deal with such data, as it makes access to credit quick, inexpensive, and predictable. Such convenience is certainly a better deal than extreme privacy.
It's also worth noting that while we tend to place a high value on privacy, it was strong community reaction, not law enforcement (as there were no obvious laws broken), that came down on Maureen O'Gara for part 1 of her recent exposé of Pamela Jones. The kind and extent of privacy Jones' supporters (including Dana) demanded for her is not one that law can deliver. That kind and extent of privacy depends on the person for whom it is demanded being really uninteresting to everyone. Ms. Jones has made herself an interesting character, if not to her supporters, then most certainly to her detractors. If she is unwilling to complete out the data necessary for others to determine what her reputation (see, I am making this relevant) should be, then others will seek out that data. You know, kinda like the press did with John F. (or is it "D") Kerry's Yale grades.
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