[...] This sense that we are all traceable, that we have become data – to be marked and inscribed in a system of traces: gleaned, stored, organized, dispersed, sorted, analyzed and massaged; deconstructed and reconstructed into various modalities, pushed through specialized filters and segmented off algorithmically for analytical appraisal, reanalyzed by specialized knowledge-workers in the capitalist military-surveillance empire that then present their findings to higher echelons of this same global system to ultimately be registered and formalized into various linguistic traces and signifiers as adjuncts to the decisional apparatus of global governance as a system of command and control itself. This is the new world we live in, the merger of the military-industrial and security-surveillance empire of global capital. [...]
What we learn from most of these is the truth of its existence, the infrastructure that encircles not only America but the global system itself. The tip of an iceberg that seeks to trace and quantify, measure and capitalize on our lives from physical to mental and mark and inscribe it for its own ignoble purposes. But acknowledging that it does indeed exist is just a beginning. An important beginning to be sure, but only a first step in understand what we can do to resist and combat this behemoth that entraps us in its shadow world [...]
How could one escape the very technological systems that hide everywhere in plain site? Even if one were to log off, disband, disconnect from the electronic grid today: it would already have you captured in the traces its captured and analyzed and logged away within its (semi)permanent data storage systems. [...]
Another point [Zizek] makes is that all this massive data will ultimately end in confusion for those supposed experts using it: that let’s say, like our Congress who gets this massive Obama HealthCare book that is ten-thousand pages thick and realizes “Why should we read it? We know we cannot know what’s in the details, it would take years to decipher it. So they vote on what they do not know, not on what they actually know.” This our massive Big Data system: a system with so much data that even a quantum computer could not analyze and decipher, and even if it did: the humans who would benefit from it: our leaders would probably not read it, but would make decisions not on it but on their own ideological fantasies. This is Zizek’s point. [...]
Capitalism has begun to implode and destroy the very roots of its own power: private property in the visible and invisible relations of physical and subjective property. In totalizing surveillance capital is destroying the very base of its own social relations: the private individual – the Liberal Subject
---
Source: S. C. Hickman, "The Total Surveillance Society: The Endgame of Democracy," Dark Ecologies blog, June 28, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://darkecologies.com/2015/06/28/the-total-surveillance-society-the-endgame-of-democracy/.
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label privacy. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Thursday, October 24, 2013
Surveillance, Images, and the Devil
Photographer Sheri Lynn Behr put together a photo project that explores an increasingly-discussed topic, namely, the rapidly disintegrating line between the public sphere and one's private life, especially through the use of image-capturing technology.
Behr remarked, "I wanted to see what other people would do, in this age of smart phones and surveillance.” How would you react? Earlier this evening, I photographed two seminarians in front of me during dinner conversation. At first they tried blocking their faces and stopping me. They jokingly asked what I was doing on my phone, whether I was uploading awkward photographs onto my Facebook or Twitter.
Behr continues:
Earlier this year, 60 Minutes came out with a segment on facial recognition technology. It notes that for the Boston Marathon bombing, although there were images of the bomber, the bomber was captured not by matching photo images but fingerprints. It explores the issue more in-depth: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147158n
The same technology shows up in the movie Minority Report, which the 60 Minutes segment briefly explores, such as the influence on advertisements and consumerism.
We also live in a society that praises constant self-assertion, whether through Facebook and other social media websites, through YouTube vlogs, through blogs, etc. Even this post is an example of such self-assertion. It's what Behr describes as "image-obsessed." We like to control our output, showing people exactly what we want them to see. We borrow and share familiar angles of photograph capturing, such as the famous selfie. We share status updates that provide a slice of our life that we alone wish to share and have people notice, painting a picture of whom we seem to be. I become what I describe, what I present, the image I project.
But we all understand that this self-assertion is an extension of the basic realization that children have at some point when they look into the mirror and realize that they are looking, not at another child who is imitating them, but themselves and that their being involves an image, an objective side. We want to look in the mirror and see, instead, what we upload on Facebook; after all, people on the Internet don't have a mirror of us.
But when it comes to other people capturing images of us, most of us detest it. Some enjoy it, but it is interesting to meditate on why we might dislike having our images leave our control. Privacy, reputation, and manipulation among other things. But even more fundamentally, we lose control of ourselves, which we equate with our self-output image. If I have no control over my image, I lose myself.
Again, this unconscious mentality is clearly contrary to the spiritual self-surrender necessary for the reformation of Christ's image in us, whom we must remember are made in one image—the image and likeness of God.
It has been particularly unfortunate to see women especially take advantage of the selfie in order to post semi- or fully pornography photographs of themselves. This phenomena suggests another element—the ease in which the demonic enters into all of our attempts to take matters of our destiny, our identity into our own hands. The selfie becomes a new form of magic, by which we attempt to control the forces around us and thus save ourselves rather than allow ourselves to be saved. Even in the masochistic end of a relationship, such masochism is usually consciously chosen, and if not consciously so, unconsciously provoked and encouraged. These are all assertions of self that very easily give room for the demonic to enter in.
It seems necessary to me, then, to reflect on what I put out before doing so, to reflect on my motives and my goal and my relation to Christ at that moment. Am I trying to allow Christ's image emerge through me, or am I asserting myself and in so doing allowing sin and the devil to be my PR managers?
NoSafeDistance addresses the idea of photography without permission—a concept practically unavoidable in what Behr calls today’s “post-privacy world and image obsessed society.” Separated only by glass store windows, Behr turns the camera on strangers just long enough to capture the surprise on the other side.Source: Ben Marcin, "Too Close For Comfort: Portraits of Strangers Taken Without Their Permission," Feature Shoot, October 23, 2013, accessed October 24, 2013, http://www.featureshoot.com/2013/10/too-close-for-comfort-portraits-of-strangers-taken-without-their-permission/
Behr remarked, "I wanted to see what other people would do, in this age of smart phones and surveillance.” How would you react? Earlier this evening, I photographed two seminarians in front of me during dinner conversation. At first they tried blocking their faces and stopping me. They jokingly asked what I was doing on my phone, whether I was uploading awkward photographs onto my Facebook or Twitter.
Behr continues:
I’m always interested in things that we are aware of, but don’t necessarily notice, like surveillance cameras. After the Boston Marathon tragedy, people were talking about how great it was that we caught the bombers because of security camera footage. I can’t deny that that was a good thing, but no one talks about the people who were misidentified on surveillance video and how their lives were disrupted. I think all this surveillance falls into really a gray area—there’s so much of it, and we need it to be out in the open and under discussion.Source: Ibid.
Earlier this year, 60 Minutes came out with a segment on facial recognition technology. It notes that for the Boston Marathon bombing, although there were images of the bomber, the bomber was captured not by matching photo images but fingerprints. It explores the issue more in-depth: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147158n
The same technology shows up in the movie Minority Report, which the 60 Minutes segment briefly explores, such as the influence on advertisements and consumerism.
We also live in a society that praises constant self-assertion, whether through Facebook and other social media websites, through YouTube vlogs, through blogs, etc. Even this post is an example of such self-assertion. It's what Behr describes as "image-obsessed." We like to control our output, showing people exactly what we want them to see. We borrow and share familiar angles of photograph capturing, such as the famous selfie. We share status updates that provide a slice of our life that we alone wish to share and have people notice, painting a picture of whom we seem to be. I become what I describe, what I present, the image I project.
But we all understand that this self-assertion is an extension of the basic realization that children have at some point when they look into the mirror and realize that they are looking, not at another child who is imitating them, but themselves and that their being involves an image, an objective side. We want to look in the mirror and see, instead, what we upload on Facebook; after all, people on the Internet don't have a mirror of us.
But when it comes to other people capturing images of us, most of us detest it. Some enjoy it, but it is interesting to meditate on why we might dislike having our images leave our control. Privacy, reputation, and manipulation among other things. But even more fundamentally, we lose control of ourselves, which we equate with our self-output image. If I have no control over my image, I lose myself.
Again, this unconscious mentality is clearly contrary to the spiritual self-surrender necessary for the reformation of Christ's image in us, whom we must remember are made in one image—the image and likeness of God.
It has been particularly unfortunate to see women especially take advantage of the selfie in order to post semi- or fully pornography photographs of themselves. This phenomena suggests another element—the ease in which the demonic enters into all of our attempts to take matters of our destiny, our identity into our own hands. The selfie becomes a new form of magic, by which we attempt to control the forces around us and thus save ourselves rather than allow ourselves to be saved. Even in the masochistic end of a relationship, such masochism is usually consciously chosen, and if not consciously so, unconsciously provoked and encouraged. These are all assertions of self that very easily give room for the demonic to enter in.
It seems necessary to me, then, to reflect on what I put out before doing so, to reflect on my motives and my goal and my relation to Christ at that moment. Am I trying to allow Christ's image emerge through me, or am I asserting myself and in so doing allowing sin and the devil to be my PR managers?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)