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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1997 Little Brother is growing... WE are all familiar with the privacy-invading photographers and their love of the rich and famous as their primary victims. Well, technology now offers us all the opportunity to be amateur paparazzi and victims at the same time. We may have our very own 15Mbytes of fame, like it or not. Just cast an eye around any street or store to see the obvious, and not so obvious, range of security cameras. And then there is Joe Public sporting the latest hand-held camcorder or digital camera. We are heading towards a world where we can all be voyeurs and victims. The glass wall on my office allows anyone walking by to see me at any time. To augment this I installed a camera I named "Little Brother", to allow anyone on the office network to look in at any time. I see it as just another window. At first I had a chime to give me an "earcon" that someone was looking, this being a parallel of me being aware of the presence of people. The prospect alarmed many colleagues, and even more so when I removed the chime. In general people do not like the prospect of always being on public view. I did this as an experiment to see what advantage could be realised by being able to drop into someone's office at will. Is he or she in, alone, free or busy? This is useful information in a world that is speeding up, and we are increasingly short of time. Interestingly, some of my people reciprocated with even more Little Brother cameras, and widely varying degrees of commitment to always being on show. Provided this is a matter of personal choice and we remain individually in control, I can see little objection to such systems. What should we be worrying about? Is it that there is some underlying threat posed by a technology providing an ability to place miniature cameras in and on anything? Being on camera and being aware of the fact, even if it is an unconscious awareness, is one thing, but the spy camera is another. The next time you are in a hotel, lift, shopping centre, office block, car park, just anywhere, seek out the cameras and ask the fundamental question: do you feel threatened or comforted, exposed or safe? Most people see them as a safety feature and a comfort. This is perhaps a counter-intuitive outcome promoted by their success in crime prevention. Even speed cameras and the eye in the sky helicopter have been quietly accepted by the public at large as providing more benefit than threat. After receiving a speeding ticket most are reasonably ambivalent; it was a fair cop, and I shouldn't have been doing 85mph. So where do we draw the line? At what point do we react against this creeping invasion of our individual activities? For me it is the concealed camera, smaller than a shirt button, worn as jewellery or embedded in some obscure inanimate object, when I am totally unaware of the user and the purpose. I for one do not wish to live in a world where my thinking, actions and speech become constrained by the threat of being on record for later unspecified use, in or out of context. But the technology is available, and it is being used. Legal agencies using the technology is one thing, but not individuals, corporations, the media and others. I vote that cameras in these sectors be made very visible when active. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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