Dark Data: Surveillance
- Milan Gary
- Apr 3, 2018
- 3 min read
“Visibility is a trap” - Michel Foucault
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I really appreciated how this reading began. Foucault relays the story of how surveillance was used during the time of a plague because she provides a basic understanding of the power of vision.
Disciplinary mechanisms. What's terrifying about the Panopticon is how applicable and easy it is to implement within various systems: Education | Criminal Justice | Work, etc. Bring this idea to a more basic level, at some point almost everyday I encounter someone wearing sunglasses inside. This concept makes no sense to me because there's no sunshine in a building, so immediately get annoyed because they are only hindering their own vision. After reading this, i've realized that what annoys me isn't the fact that they're making it harder for them to see, but that they could be looking at me without me knowing. Sometimes, when I have the courage, I find myself searching for their eyes behind the tinted lense. Seeing someone with shades on inside, immediately makes me uneasy, it's an obvious representation on how someone can observe my moves without me knowing. The panopticon creates these feelings of anxiety and uneasiness on a larger scale. I truly believe that one of the most dangerous aspects of this concept is how the individual being seen internalizes this feeling. If the Panopticon proves to be successful, then the one being seen will begin to self monitor, further mentally victimizing themselves.
The Panopticon is representative of a cage. This hierarchical structure of seeing vs being seen has only been enhanced by the creation of machine vision. Eyes are everywhere today in the form of CCTV cameras, wearable tech, data distribution, etc. Each year this engineers and designer play a role in how small and advanced these eyes become. Modern examples of the Panopticon are explained through stories of interactions between human and machine. If machine vision is taking over most highly populated public spaces then are we giving machines the upper hand?
Even with live camera feeds running 24/7 it's rare that you hear of an individual being caught doing a crime (via camera) during the act. Most camera footage is comes to play once that act has occurred, and that's do to the fact that the human eye is faulty and might not see what's right front of them. Imagine when the human doesn't have to make the decision to intervene and respond to a crime happening, but the machine does.
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Operation images. It’s crazy how human readable images are not necessary for computers/machines to understand the image. Think about that. Machines can understand that which the human eye can not. We know how powerful vision is in general and the amount of power one has based on their vision/perspective of the world around them, why do we give this power to a machines. By giving machines vision we allow the human to be lazy and close their eyes more, fully entrusting the machine. More surveillance, more eyes = less trust.
Paglen makes the statement that in order to see and understand the invisible world of machine - machine visual culture, we need to unlearn how to see like humans. This is WILD because cameras/surveillance were created to see like humans but always active. Then machines were made smarter to recognize the unrecognizable, in which case we relied on these machines to see what we were missing. Smart right? …. No. Once we hit this step, we made the idea of human eye-sight anachronistic. As soon as human bodily functions become old fashion, then these functions become a little more insignificant and the more machine-like qualities become superior. Another aspect to this machine vision is that machines can communicate with each other without humans knowing what’s being said. Now this breaches a dangerous territory.
Example: think about automated cars. What if certain signage was created that only the cars can understand, streets would look completely today.
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