Tuesday, October 24, 2006
The age of sousveillance
"However, if technology continues to evolve along current lines, then Big Brother will end up being far more powerful than Orwell envisaged (in the sense that we will have far less individual privacy). In a world of matchbox-sized MPeg4 camcorders and cameraphones, of always-on broadband and RFID, your next-door neighbours will be the nemesis of privacy".
Technology has changed in the last 20 years extremely. The surveillance on anything has also increased. With the new technology of cell phone cameras and small digital cameras people can take pictures of you doing many things. The government encouraged people to take pictures if they felt somebody or something was suspicious dealing with terrorist acts. The government could soon know what everybody is doing at anytime with all their new equipment.
A terrific word for all of this, invented by Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, is "sousveillance". The reason sousveillance is such a concern is that it is not under control and there are no transparently obvious ways it could be brought under control.
This is something we are not thinking about now, but it is definetly something that will be an issue in the future. This is suppose to be the land of the free, how free will we be with the government knowing everyone of our moves and actions.
Technology has changed in the last 20 years extremely. The surveillance on anything has also increased. With the new technology of cell phone cameras and small digital cameras people can take pictures of you doing many things. The government encouraged people to take pictures if they felt somebody or something was suspicious dealing with terrorist acts. The government could soon know what everybody is doing at anytime with all their new equipment.
A terrific word for all of this, invented by Steve Mann, a professor at the University of Toronto, is "sousveillance". The reason sousveillance is such a concern is that it is not under control and there are no transparently obvious ways it could be brought under control.
This is something we are not thinking about now, but it is definetly something that will be an issue in the future. This is suppose to be the land of the free, how free will we be with the government knowing everyone of our moves and actions.
