BigMother.dk

Update Witness have launched a forum on how to establish a successful footage sharing web portal after the discussion featuring af WorldChanging. Go and contribute if you have any good ideas, experience or technical knowledge.

Explorations always happens in jumps. Today I stumbled upon a whole bunch of surveillance niceties (again due to WorldChanging) which I will try to present briefly.

First, in an ‘old’ and quite extensive article at WorldChanging, Jamais Cascio proposes Participatory Panopticon as the more likely non-big Brother future of surveillance:

“… in the world of the participatory panopticon, this constant surveillance is done by the citizens themselves, and is done by choice. It’s not imposed on us by a malevolent bureaucracy or faceless corporations. The participatory panopticon will be the emergent result of myriad independent rational decisions, a bottom-up version of the constantly watched society… if the question is “who watches the watchmen?” the answer is “all of us.”

This view is pretty close to the whole point of BigMother (and what I sometimes refer to as counter surveillance). The article contains numerous valuable links and references, although it sometimes slips into more geekish gadget-futurism.

Second, there’s the term ‘sousveillance’ (watching over from beneath) which beautifully captures some of my personal discont with the Big Brother monopoly. The term is semi-academic and seemingly quite developed. According the site devoted sousveillance:

“There are 2 main definitions, which are approximately equivalent, but each capture slightly different aspects of sousveillance:

1. Inverse surveillance: to watch from below;
2. Personal experience capture: recording of an activity by a participant in the activity. There is already a certain legal precedent for audio sousveillance, e.g. “one-party” recording of telephone conversations enjoys greater legal protection than recording by a person who is not a party to the conversation. In most states, audio surveillance is illegal, but audio sousveillance is legal.”

Also this page is a rich source of references and ideas. I’m not done with it.

Lastly, Peter Gabriel’s (yes, the musician) Witness Media Archive program, dedicated promotion of human right by helping the violated to document the offenses with pictures. Witness have created a web site with filmed or photographed abuses and train people in using this medium. The next step is to allow easy upload and distribution of for instance camera phone footage, which will bring even more leverage to the abused. Even if not CareWare in it’s strict sense, this service truly photo sharing with a sense. Read an interview with Gabriel in Business Week

Although not the first time in history an American has declared more independence from foreign oil, the State of the Union address held yesterday by George W. Bush might signal an interesting and important change:

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.”

Whatever the wrong motives for such a turn, it would bring about several positive developments. The present ridiculous conflict between Denmark and the Muslim countries due to an inconsiderate series of drawings brought in Jyllands Posten have made we wish we could just let go of our Middle East focus altogether. Leave the region to its obviously different cultural values and ideas instead of dreaming of democratizing the whole world. If democracy is intrinsically good, they will find out themselves. Besides misinformation (and manipulation?), the only reason why so many Muslim men march the streets and burn Danish flags due to a single page in a Danish paper is that they have been brought up with the whole worlds attention due to permanent conflicts. This training in theatrical symbolism and media diplomacy has simply provided them with an unsound familiarity with cameras and too little self-restraint in expressing grand ideological opinions (a funny example of misplaced statement was the demonstrating man requiring the Danish queen to officially apologize).

So not only would a decreased American interest in Middle East oil turn down the attention to the region and reduce the occasional unjust wars against whatever ‘tyranny’ and oil source. But it would probably also undermine such totally misguided and overkilled reactions as the boycott of Denmark. Besides, this would also the long overdue exploration of alternatives to oil to reduce the vast amount of fossil fuels consumed in the US – and consequently in the rest of the bandwagon west.