I attended a seminar by David Horner and Martin De Saulles (both University of Brighton) entitled: The portable panopticon: morality and mobile technologies. I apologise in advance to the authors for condensing their work into a few paras, but this is the general argument as I understood it:Internet-enabled mobile devices are at the "permeation" stage of adoption - cheap enough to be in common use, but not yet at the "power" stage where they are deeply entrenched in society. So if there was ever a time to put any regulations or checks in place on how they are used (like in the States where they tried, unsuccessfully, to ensure all camera phones made a "shutter" noise so people knew they were being photographed) then that time is now.
The reason for the Panopticon title (a model of prisoner surveillance) is that in a society already dominated by observation, mobile devices decentralise the observation - and all of a sudden we are all the observers, observing each other and the police, Government. In the Panopticon, prisoners modify their behaviour as they know they might be being observed. Is the same true of us? Given any body might be live streaming a video of me every time I step outside my house, do I modify my behaviour? And as the owner of the mobile device, do I modify my own behaviour and not live video stream my next door neighbour, because social conventions are developing that says that's not a good way to behave?
Hence the title of this post - I was thinking about my personal groundrules on privacy. Above is a photo of Martin taken during the presentation, I didn't ask him if I could take this, I had my phone on silent so he doesn't know I took it, yet I feel perfectly comfortable about posting it up on my blog. I suspect the authors will be more concerned by my brief ramble through the topics in their paper than by the sneaky photo. But, I would never post up photos publically online, without consent, of other people's children. I imagine these are the sorts of social conventions that will develop.
However the other topic we touched on was how different age groups tend to have different notions of privacy. I suspect that most people tend to just go with the default settings when they post stuff up to Facebook etc (sorry, horrible generalisation) and the more familiar with the technology, the less you feel the need to restrict access to anything. I think that I make a quick but conscious decision whenever I post (or don't post!) something online about who will see it and who is affected by it being there. But I probably do break my own rules, especially when out and about with my iPhone, catching a fun photo here and there, and it being quite so easy to post it up to Twitter...maybe an "are you sure?" screen before any of us post anything would help!
2 comments:
Regarding the matter of do people modify their behaviour when they think they might be observed. The Panopticon idea is that people self moderate down in this position, essentially reducing their behaviour to more acceptable 'norms' because of what might be seen of their activities.
However I think it is fascinating that every year in Higher Education and indeed society at large we see the other approach being in evidence. For example students that arrive at University (often a place geographically removed from where they grew up) and attempt to re-engineer themselves as they wish they were rather than how they find themselves. It is especially noticeable amongst the 'standard model' of undergraduates, namely those of 18-20 years of age. They have just emerged from the hell of adolescence where hormones rush and the body betrays. Most of our identities are formed at these times and on reflection you wouldn't advise anyone whose body is suffering from drug induced instability and emotional difficulties (puberty) to make important life decisions. However that is what happens and so we often find that the opportunities offered by college or university (or Facebook or Twitter) tempt many people to re-invent themselves.
This used to be a great deal trickier with person to person interaction, but ever since the introduction of communication that requires less sensory input (writing, telephone, fax, email, etc.) those who felt less than they wanted to be have an opportunity to redress the balance. These mechanisms obfuscate the inadequate you and permit the inner, rippling, bronzed, godlike individual to emerge.
So I suppose what I'm saying/asking is does the Panopticon model not also make it likely that people will operate in a less constrained model since the physical them can take a back seat and the more real or desirable construct can emerge?
Is that a bad thing or a public service? The problem may be that we have no way of telling what behaviour is closer to the 'real' person, what is the product of social conformity and how many are just dickheads.
Cameron,
xxx.
Thanks, Katie, for a very thoughtful post and for coming to our seminar - it's very flattering to have it blogged. Your photo illustrates one of our points very well - you never know when someone might be videoing or photographing you or what they might do with the photo. I really like your idea of an "are really sure" button before posting stuff to the web. I suspect it will a combination of solutions like that and common sense and decency that will regulate our behaviour more than legislation or rules drafted by people who probably don't understand or use the technology in the first place.
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