section two [scale: social, political]
Alex Haw, CCLTV, 2005
design ethics [social + environmental + political]
Alex Haw, CCLTV, 2005
CCTV Control Room, Camden County Council, UK
National Grid, UK
COBB County Electric, Georgia, USA
roadside speed cameras
Michel Foucault, “Panop9cism,” from Discipline and Punish, 1975
Michel Foucault, “Panop9cism,” from Discipline and Punish, 1975
Michel Foucault, “Panop9cism,” from Discipline and Punish, 1975 The inmate is “object of information,” but “never a subject in communication.”
The inmate is “object of information,” but “never a subject in communication.”
Asked in a 2002 interview to describe the ultimate search engine, Google co-founder Sergey Brin half-jokingly pointed to HAL 9000, the supercomputer from the Stanley Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brin said, "HAL . . . had a lot of information, could piece it together, could rationalize it. Now hopefully . . . it would never have a bug like HAL did where he killed the occupants of the spaceship. But that's what we're striving for, and I think we've made it a part of the way there.�
“What the prospect of growth without limit means for the public is something more complicated than a pure thrill. It's a prospect that has appeared so quickly, historically speaking, that we have not really had time to take a good look at what Google has become, let alone to consider what comes next.� Randall Stross, Planet Google, 2009
As Stross puts it, “The ultimate goal is to provide Google’s software with enough personal detail about each of its visitors that it could provide customized answers to the questions ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’” Google, in other words, would very much like to digitize your soul. Sam Anderson, “Algorithm & Blues,” New York Books (5 Oct. 2008)
Computers record our transac9ons, check against other known details, ensure that we and not others are billed or paid, store bits of our biographies, or assess our financial, legal or na9onal standing. Each 9me we do one of these things we actually or poten9ally leave a trace of our doings. Computers and their associated communica9ons systems now mediate all these kinds of rela9onships; to par9cipate in modern society is to be under electronic surveillance. David Lyon, The Electronic Eye: The Rise of Surveillance Society (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 4.