Another Step Towards the Participatory Panopticon

The idea behind the 'participatory panopticon' [and I think the allusion to Foucault is deliberate] is that 'Big Brother' is us: "The Participatory Panopticon won't arise out of a single, clear choice -- it will come from myriad smaller, rational decision and technologies, all intended to solve very real problems." Those problems being things like remembering what we were told in that phone call yeaterday about .... or wanting to make sure that we alwyas have the means to record those 'aaah' moments in life. Of course there are difficulties [rightly] in the way of this. In the UK you need to warn people that their conversations or images may be recorded and if they insist, they have a right to access to them or even to refuse to grant permission for them to be used -I think.

What are the grand-scale social consequences of a bottom-up surveillance society? Especially when it is foreseeable that some people may be able to pretty much build in the equipment to what they wear or even their own body. Will reviewing your day's recordings and editting it become a hobby [even some of it on line as weblogs?]. What will it do to our behaviour and psychology to live knowing that we are likely to be under surveillance. Will we 'act' up even more than we do already? [Oh yes, I hold to the view that we all act the particular versions of ourselves that we deem appropriate for our different social settings]. And how will that differ and be similar to the sense that those who have grown up in particular kinds of religious contexts have of being constantnly under surveillance by God? It all depends, I guess, on how you view the surveilleurs: as fashion fascistas likely to publish for the amusement of others every 'wrong' style decision we are caught making, or as our adoring audience or both or ... what?

WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: Another Step Towards the Participatory Panopticon: