The Rise of The Participatory Panopticon - WWW - Worldchanging

29/03/13 The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon — www.worldchanging.
com — Readability
worldchanging.com
The Rise of the Participatory

Panopticon
This week, I spoke at the first

MeshForum conference, held
in Chicago. The following is
an adaptation of my talk,
which adapts some earlier
material with some new
observations. Fair warning:
it's a long piece. I look
forward to your comments.
The photo at right is by

Howard Greenstein, taken
during my presentation.
Soon probably within the next decade, certainly within the next two
we'll be living in a world where what we see, what we hear, what we
experience will be recorded wherever we go. There will be few statements or
scenes that will go unnoticed, or unremembered. Our day to day lives will be
archived and saved. What’s more, these archives will be available over the
net for recollection, analysis, even sharing.
And we will be doing it to ourselves.
This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching

over your shoulder, nor will it be a world of a handful of corporate siblings
training their evervigilant security cameras and tags on you. Such
monitoring may well exist, probably will, in fact, but it will be overwhelmed
by the millions of cameras and recorders in the hands of millions of Little
Brothers and Little Sisters. We will carry with us the tools of our own
transparency, and many, perhaps most, will do so willingly, even happily.
I call this world the Participatory Panopticon.
www.readability.com/articles/cgx8bilx 1/13
29/03/13 The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon — www.worldchanging.com — Readability
The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham's 18th century model for a prison in
which all inmates could be watched at all times. The term has in more
recent years come to have a broader meaning, that of a world in which all of
us are under constant surveillance. The proliferation of video gear in the
hands of governments and corporations feeds a not unreasonable fear of
the panopticon. The dramatic reduction in size of video cameras and the
addition of tools for digital analysis have further enhanced that fear.
(Charlie Stross, in his 2002 essay "The Panopticon Singularity," expands on
this notion, spelling out the various new tools for relentless observation.)
But 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 bottomup version of the constantly watched society.
This day is coming not because of some distant breakthrough or revolution.

The breakthroughs are already happening. The revolution has already
taken place.
It started with the Sharp JSH04 and 05, the first camera phones.
Introduced in Japan in late 2000, these phones took tiny, grainy pictures,
about a tenth of a megapixel in resolution. Other manufacturers quickly
followed suit, and the market for camera phones exploded; by 2003,
camera phones outsold nonphone based digital cameras. Over the last
couple of years, the quality of the cameras built into the phones has
increased dramatically this last March, for example, Samsung released a
7 megapixel cameraphone, a level of resolution better than most straight
digital cameras in use.
You may not be aware of it, but the cameraphone in your pocket is the
harbinger of a massive social transformation, one already underway.
This transformation could be at least as big as the ones triggered by

television and by computers, as the base technology mobile phones fills
a new niche, different from both of these earlier technologies. TV is a
“passive reception” medium; computers are an “active engagement”
medium. Mobile phones can be thought of as a “passive engagement”
medium, available for connections and interaction without requiring user
attention.
Mobile phones are designed presuming that users will leave them on, only
turning them off for limited periods. For the most part, they rest in your
pocket or bag, waiting for activity which could come at any time; mobiles
are “always on” network devices. Current mobile phone networks aren’t as
“always on” as, say, a broadband connection, but each successive network
generation gets closer to that goal.
Because of that connection, it's possible to take a snapshot with a

cameraphone and send it off in email or post it to a web page with a push
of a button or two. Thousands of socalled "moblog" sites have sprung up,
dedicated to cameraphone shots of whatever captures the photographer's
eye at that moment. And increasingly, cameraphones can do more than just
take still images. A growing number of cameraphones can record and
send video clips. With socalled 3G networks, bandwidth is sufficient to
send live webcamstyle video from a mobile phone.
So let's take a look at what the Participatory Panopticon is today.
We're just starting to see the potential of cameraphones for doing more
than sharing snapshots of amusing signs and naked friends. As I wrote
about a few months ago, a nonprofit group called the Swinfen Charitable
Trust enables adhoc connections between people in remote parts of the
developing world and doctors digital cameras and camera phones. More
formally, earlier this year, the medical journal Archives of Dermatology ran
a paper by the University Hospital of Geneva comparing the ability of
dermatologists to diagnose skin ulcers by examining the patient in person
with their ability to do so via cameraphone images. In the study, the
diagnoses were identical in nearly every case, supporting the idea that
cameraphones can be another tool for telemedicine in remote areas.
A few universities and activist groups are experimenting with applications

allowing cameraphones to read bar codes, functioning like mobile
networked bar code scanners. Users can snap a photo of a bar code on a
product and get back information from a variety of websites on whether the
product was produced sustainably, whether the company making it
behaved ethically, even whether there's a better price to be had at a different
store.
But the panopticon aspect is really most visible in the world of politics and
activism. In the US, in last November's national election, a group calling
itself "video vote vigil" asked citizens to keep a watch for polling place
abuses and problems, recording them if possible with digital cameras or
camera phones. In the UK, the delightfullynamed "Blair Watch Project"
was an effort, coordinated by the newspaper The Guardian, to keep tabs on

Prime Minister Tony Blair as he campaigns around the country. The project
was prompted by the Labour party's decision to limit Blair's media exposure
on the trail; instead he was covered by more cameras than ever.
Efforts such as these make it clear that every citizen with a cameraphone
can be a reporter. Citizens can capture a politician’s inadvertent gesture,
quick glance or private frown, and make sure those images are seen around
the world. The lack of traditional cameras snapping away can no longer be
an opportunity for public figures to relax. All those running for office have
to assume that their actions and words are being recorded, even if no
cameras are evident, as long as citizens are present.
This notion of individual citizens keeping a technological eye on the people

in charge is referred to as "sousveillance," a recent neologism meaning
"watching from below" in comparison to "surveillance," meaning
"watching from above.” Proponents of the notion see it as an equalizer,
making it possible for individual citizens to keep tabs on those in charge.
For the sousveillance movement, if the question is “who watches the
watchmen?” the answer is “all of us.”
Even if the term sousveillance is recent, the action isn’t. An early wellknown
sousveillance effort long predating the term is the Witness project.
Founded in 1992 by musician Peter Gabriel, Witness has partnered with
over 200 human rights groups in 50 countries, supplying video cameras
and communication gear to allow people on the scene to document abuses
of human rights. Witness attempts to create pressure for change by shining
a light on injustice around the world. These are remarkably brave people. If
the worst sousveillance supporters in the US may face is being escorted out
of a department store, the worst Witness activists might face is torture and
death.
But the Witness cameras stand alone; their only connection is via the hand
delivery of video tape.
Things change when you can send your exposé over the Internet. Speed and
breadth of access are the best allie for transparency, and the Internet has
both in abundance. Once damning photos or video have been released onto
the web, there’s no bringing them back efforts to do so are more likely to
draw attention to them, in fact.
These days, sousveillance can be summed up with just one image:
As we noted at the time, Abu

Ghraib was the digital camera's
"Rodney King" moment, with the
pictures taken of prisoner abuses
by American troops in Iraq, sent
via email around the world. The
threestep process of See, Snap,
Send, when empowered by digital
technology, can be revolutionary
action. Whether the people
taking the pictures did so out of a
sense of outrage, a desire to
document a moment, or even
misguided amusement, the result
was still the same: recognition
that anyone, anywhere, with a
digital camera and a network connection has enormous power, perhaps
enough to alter the course of a war or to shake the policies of the most
powerful nation on Earth.
In reaction to the photos, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said:

"We're functioning ... in the Information Age, where people are running
around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs
and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise,
when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon.”
Digital devices and network connections can allow individuals to bypass

chains of command and control.
Although the Abu Ghraib pictures were taken with regular digital cameras,
they suggest that the effect of cameraphones will prove even more
exasperating to those in power. The proliferation of small, easily concealed
and readily networked digital cameras can be a headache for those trying to
retain some degree of privacy, but they’re a nightmare for those trying to
keep hold of some degree of secrecy.
And the value of sousveillance can be demonstrated by actions here in the

US, as well.
New York City police arrested nearly two thousand people during last year's
Republican National Convention. Protestors were condemned by authorities
for "rioting," "resisting arrest," and the like. The city provided video tapes to
the press and to the courts taken by police officers that seemed to show
protestors out of control. But many arrestees denied that they'd done
anything wrongsome even said they were not protesting at all, and were
only guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But it turned out that the police weren’t the only ones armed with video
cameras. Citizen video efforts (PDF) show people swept up without cause
and without resistance. It's become increasingly clear that police officers
misrepresented the events at trial, and that prosecutors selectively edited the
official video record to prove their cases. According to the New York Times,
of the nearly 1,700 cases processed by early April, 91 percent ended with
charges dropped or a verdict of not guilty. A startlingly large number of
them have involved citizen video showing clearly that the police and
prosecutors were lying.
The next time around, don’t expect the police to politely ignore citizens with
video cameras. Unfortunately, people carrying video cameras, even small
ones, are pretty obvious. But people carrying mobile phones are not. Video
phones and higherbandwidth networks will transform activism. The next
time around, we'll see the transmission of dozens, hundreds, thousands of
different views from marches and protests live over the web.
As the selectively edited RNC protest videos suggest, you can’t always trust
what you see. But what digital technology taketh away, it also giveth.
We're all familiar with the use of programs like photoshop to make images
of the unreal look believable. Usually it's done for (sometimes dark) humor,
but sometimes photo manipulations are done for more serious or malicious
reasons. The lesson is clear: skillful use of digital tools to reshape our visual
records can call into question the veracity of all digital photos.
But that’s not the whole story.
It’s easy to alter images from a single camera. Somewhat less simple, but still
quite possible, is the alteration of images from a few cameras, owned by
different photographers or media outlets.
But when you have images from dozens or hundreds or thousands of digital
cameras and cameraphones, in the hands of citizen witnesses? At that
point, I start siding with the pictures being real.
Now it's all well and good to think about the value of alwaysnetworked
personal cameras as a tool for sousveillance, for “watching the watchmen,”
but really: how often do we attend political rallies or visit military prisons?
Cameraphones as tools of political action, while certainly important, will not

in and of themselves lead to the participatory panopticon.
Your spouse will.
It's inevitable. You'll want to recall a casual mention of his favorite movie, or
the name and year of the wine she loved so much, or what he *really* said
in that argument. You'll want to be able to share the amazing flock of birds
you saw on the way home from work, or the enthralling street musician you
passed while shopping. In the past, all you could rely upon was imperfect
memory and whatever descriptive skills you possess. Now, and increasingly
as the technology progresses, these tools will make it possible to retain and
share those moments with perfect clariyt.
It’s important to recognize that this is happening already. Howard

Rheingold wrote recently of "neta," which he describes as a Japanese
tradition of sharing things seen with one’s friends. Cameraphones are
allowing neta to be shared visually, not just conversationally. He relates the
comments of a Japanese observer:
"...cameraphones capture the more fleeting and unexpected moments of

surprise, beauty and adoration in the everyday..."
As we become more accustomed to using cameraphones to capture the

fleeing and unexpected, the more they will become integrated into our
social discourse and personal relationships.
But the problem with the fleeting and unexpected is that, well, it's fleeting
and it's unexpected. If you don't have your cameraphone out and at the
ready, it's hard to capture those moments in full. And if you want to recall
your spouse's favorite movie or wine or moment of beauty, you're certainly
not going to whip out your mobile and say "honey, could you repeat that for
the camera?"
What’s the answer?
Get rid of the mobile phone.
Given all that I’ve said so far, that’s probably not the answer you expected.
But a handheld phoneshaped device is just one physical manifestation of
an alwayson, alwaysconnected mobile tool. It’s not the only option, and
it’s really not the best option. Digging a phone out of a pocket or bag and
holding it up to one’s head is often a clumsy activity, and certainly a
distraction while trying to do something else, like driving.
It’s likely that rather than carrying around

your networked camera as a handheld
phone, you'll wear it, probably built into
glasses. The phone would be built in, as
well, perhaps evolved into a networked
computer. Everything you say, whether to
someone in front of you or over the phone,
and everything you see, can be captured. The display can be shown on the
inside of the glasses' lenses. All of this can be done now in bits and pieces
but, so far, not very elegantly.
In their respective labs, HP, Microsoft and Nokia are all working on
variations of this idea.
But they’re not the only ones. Taking a limited approach, an Israeli
company called Natural Widget is now selling an application letting you
record your mobile phone conversations right on your phone. That’s a very
tentative step towards recording everything around you, but it’s a functional
one.
A bigger step comes from a company called DejaView.
DejaView is now selling a hat or glassesmounted camera and microphone

system connected to a small portable PC. It constantly buffers the last 30
seconds of whatever you're looking at, and can save the buffer to permanent
storage at the press of a button. In the few seconds it takes you to realize
you’re looking at bigfoot or may have just passed an old friend from high
school, the moment may have passed irrevocably. But as long as it hasn’t
been more than 30 seconds, the DejaView device can save it to a hard drive,
holding onto it for good.
The DejaView has obvious limitations: bulky camera and cable, clumsy belt
pack storage, 4 hour battery life, 30 second buffer, no ability to wirelessly
send signals, no ability to play back recordings on the spot. But anyone who
dismisses it because of them hasn't been paying attention, and should be
cursed to wander the Earth using a circa1990 cellular phone and video
camera. *This* version is ugly, ungainly, and far too limited but it's a
harbinger of things to come.
These are the progenitors of what will amount to Tivos for your everyday
life. You can think of them as personal memory assistants.
Address books and PDAs are already primitive forms of memory assistance,
but they require positive action. You have to enter your contacts, your
calendars, your personal notes and observations. True PMAs will be
passively engaged, taking in everything, just like one’s own “real” memory
only they’ll be much less likely to fade over time.
And PMAs won’t just be standalone devices.
Wearable personal memory assistants will be linked to wireless networks,

and for good reasons: to let others see what you're seeing (so that they can
help you); to access greater computing power for imagerecognition
(including, eventually, facialrecognition routines so that you never forget a
face); and for offsite storage of what you're recording, giving you far
greater capacity than what you could have oncamera (and keeping the
images safe if the unit was lost or damaged).
All of these are being worked on now, in bits and pieces. Moblogging is
evolving into videoblogging. Lightweight wearable displays can show you a
computer screen which appears to be floating at arm’s length, even though
it’s really just an inch from your eye. Japanese company Omron has
developed face recognition software for cameraphones to let them recognize
their owners. A company called Colossal Storage claims that they'll have 10
petabyte drives on the market before the decade is out. 10 petabytes is ten
million gigabytes. You could store more than a year's worth of high quality
digital video, plus high fidelity audio, plus assorted other data, in space like
that.
Nobody has put them all together yet. How long do you think it will take?
Now if you're in the intellectual property business, you're probably

squirming in your seat right now. If everyone (or near enough) wears some
kind of video and audio capture device connected to the net, doesn't that
mean that everyone will be making copies of the movies they see, songs they
hear, articles they read?
Yep.
Now the obvious immediate response is "well, stop it!" ...and we'll
undoubtedly see, initially at least, regulations demanding that people shut
off their memory assistants while in movie theaters and such, or that the
devices respect digital rights management and stop recording when
copyrighted material comes on. But you know, if these devices become as
widespread, as popular, and as useful as I expect them to be, you're going
to eventually start getting pushback. If people are using these devices as an
adjunct to their memories, they're going to start feeling like restrictions on

what their assistants can record are equivalent to attacks on what they're
allowed to remember.
To be blunt: the more that people feel like these tools are extensions of
themselves, the less they’ll want to have them restricted.
I hope this pushback happens, frankly, because the alternative is rather

unpleasant: memory rights management, where you have to have a license
to remember. Think about how often you encounter copyrighted material
over the course of the day: music on the radio, shows on tv, articles in
magazines and on the web. Right now, because meat memories are
imperfect, nobody cares if we remember snippets of songs or scenes from
movies. We don’t have to pay for hazy recollections. But when you have
perfect recall, the game has changed.
This all sounds kind of overwhelming, but there’s still a lot of work to be
done. It’s not just a case of needing to integrate the hardware pieces, or
figuring out how to power it all, or making the design something people
would want to buy. There are some deeply difficult user interface issues
involved here. Recording everything is not the same as recalling something
specific. It’s a big question how you’ll be able to find the interesting stuff in
your terabytes or petabytes of life archives.
But the hard challenges are also the attractive ones. Microsoft's Bay Area
Research Center is one of the groups working on figuring out how to filter
huge volumes of data from one’s life. Their "MyLifeBits" project is trying to
come up with a way to automate metadata tags for text, visual and audio
data. They call the process "CARPE" Continuous Archival Recording of
Personal Experience. They've generated some interesting ideas and models,
but nothing marketable yet. But soon.
Now take this ability to record what you see, hear and experience, and layer
onto it the ability of these personal memory assistants to share information
with each other over an alwayson wireless network. Stand alone PMAs are
basically one’s memory on steroids incredibly useful, but not the whole
story. These tools will allow us to share our experiences with each other and
more importantly to share what we think about our experiences with
each other.
People will want to share their opinions. It’s a very human behavior. We’re
social creatures, and our perceptions are constructed based on how others
around us respond.
We’re constantly checking with each other for useful insights. You stumble
across a new restaurant, and want to know if any of your friends or any of
their friends have been there before. You learn about a new politician, and
want to know if anyone you know has heard her speak. You meet a new
guy, and want to know if someone in your circle has dated him before.
These are all conversations we've had, or have had variations of. But they're
all subject to the vagaries of memory was it *that* restaurant that had the
bug in the soup? Was it *that* politician saying something about prayer in
schools? Was it *that* guy my sister dated and dumped for cheating?
In a world of personal memory assistants and a participatory panopticon,

those questions are answered.
Tools for social networks will be the killer app of the participatory
panopticon. Imagine layering a friendster or epinions on top of this, where
comments can be given instantly, observations compared automatically. Or
imagine layering a “collaborative filtering” setup, like the comment filters on
Slashdot, or the product suggestions on Amazon.
These tools will form the basis of a reputation network, a social networking
system backed up by unimaginable amounts of recorded evidence and
opinion. You look at the person across the subway car and the system
recognizes her face, revealing to you that she just completed a business deal
with a friend of yours. Or that she just met your cousin. Or that she's known
to be a good kisser or a brilliant writer.
Clearly, the world of the participatory panopticon is not one of strong

privacy and personal secrecy. Paris Hilton is not going to be happy here. It’s
going to be hard to escape past mistakes. It’s going to be easy to find
unflattering pictures or insulting observations.
It's a world closer to what author David Brin described as a "transparent

society." But even that's not quite right in Brin's words, from the
Accelerating Change conference this last fall, "a good transparent society is
one where most of the people know what's going on most of the time." It’s
sousveillance coupled with the sense of responsibility arising from knowing
just how powerful these tools can be. It's an active phenomenon of strong
accountability and unfettered access. The participatory panopticon,
conversely, is one of passive engagement, where transparency is an
emergent phenomenon coming from connections between myriad
independent personal archives.
Also at Accelerating Change, Brad Templeton of the EFF countered Brin's

vision with a quote from the Earl of Spencer: "Privacy is what they take
away when they want to torture you.” And indeed, official misbehavior does
seem to go hand in hand with governments that want to know everything
and tell you nothing.
But the world of the participatory panopticon is not as interested in privacy,

or even secrecy, as it is in lies. A police officer lying about hitting a protestor,
a politician lying about human rights abuses, a potential new partner lying
about past indiscretions all of these are harder in a world where
everything might be on the record. The participatory panopticon is a world
where accusations can easily be documented, where corporations will
become more transparent to stakeholders as a matter of course, where
officials may even be required to wear a recorder while on duty, simply to
avoid situations where they are discovered to have been lying. It's a world
where we can all be witnesses with perfect recall. Ironically, it’s a world
where trust is easy, because lying is hard.
But ask yourself: what would it really be like to have perfect memory?
Relationships business, casual or personal are very often built on the
consensual misrememberings of slights. Memories fade. Emotional wounds
heal. The insult that seemed so important one day is soon gone. But
personal memory assistants will allow people to play back what you really
said, time and again, allow people to obsess over a momentary sneer or
distracted gaze. Reputation networks will allow people to share those
recordings, showing their friends (and their friends’ friends, and so on) just
how much of a cad you really are.
In the world of the Participatory Panopticon, it’s not just politicians

concerned about inadvertent gestures, quick glances or private frowns.
And avoiding it won't be as easy as simply agreeing to shut off the recorders.
Unless you schedule your arguments, it's inevitable that something will be
caught and archived. And if you leave your assistant off as a matter of
course, you lose its value as an aid to recalling details that pass in an instant
or didn't seem important at the time.
Moreover, if you turn your recorder off while those around you are still
archiving their lives, you place yourself at a disadvantage it’s not
knowledge that’s power, it’s recall of and access to knowledge that’s power.
Neither can we avoid it by simply deciding not to take this particular

technological path. This is not a world we can decide simply to adopt or to
reject. As I’ve shown, many of the pieces are already here or will soon be in
place; more will come about as a sideeffect of otherwise attractive
innovations. It’s unlikely that someone will set out to build the participatory
panopticon, but it’s very likely it will emerge nonetheless. It will be the
troubling and fascinating result of the combination of a multitude of useful
tools and compelling utilities.
Personal memory assistants, always on life recorders, reputation networks

and so on the pieces of the participatory panopticon will thrust us into
a world that is both painful and seductive. It will be a world of knowing that
someone may always be recording your actions. It will be a world where
official misbehavior will be ever more difficult to hide. It will be a world
where your relationships are tested by relentless honesty. It will be a world
where you will never worry about forgetting a name, or a number, or a face.
It will be a world in which it is difficult or even impossible to hide. It will be
a world where you’ll never again lose a fleeting moment of unexpected
beauty.
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29/03/13 The Rise of the Participatory Panopticon — www.worldchanging.

The Rise of the Participatory

This week, I spoke at the first

The photo at right is by

And we will be doing it to ourselves.

This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching

I call this world the Participatory Panopticon.

But in the world of the participatory panopticon, this constant surveillance

This day is coming not because of some distant breakthrough or revolution.

This transformation could be at least as big as the ones triggered by

Because of that connection, it's possible to take a snapshot with a

So let's take a look at what the Participatory Panopticon is today.

A few universities and activist groups are experimenting with applications

was an effort, coordinated by the newspaper The Guardian, to keep tabs on

This notion of individual citizens keeping a technological eye on the people

These days, sousveillance can be summed up with just one image:

As we noted at the time, Abu

In reaction to the photos, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said:

Digital devices and network connections can allow individuals to bypass

And the value of sousveillance can be demonstrated by actions here in the

But that’s not the whole story.

Cameraphones as tools of political action, while certainly important, will not

Your spouse will.

It’s important to recognize that this is happening already. Howard

"...cameraphones capture the more fleeting and unexpected moments of

As we become more accustomed to using cameraphones to capture the

What’s the answer?

Get rid of the mobile phone.

It’s likely that rather than carrying around

A bigger step comes from a company called DejaView.

DejaView is now selling a hat or glasses­mounted camera and microphone

And PMAs won’t just be stand­alone devices.

Wearable personal memory assistants will be linked to wireless networks,

Now if you're in the intellectual property business, you're probably

adjunct to their memories, they're going to start feeling like restrictions on

I hope this pushback happens, frankly, because the alternative is rather

In a world of personal memory assistants and a participatory panopticon,

Clearly, the world of the participatory panopticon is not one of strong

It's a world closer to what author David Brin described as a "transparent

Also at Accelerating Change, Brad Templeton of the EFF countered Brin's

But the world of the participatory panopticon is not as interested in privacy,

In the world of the Participatory Panopticon, it’s not just politicians

Neither can we avoid it by simply deciding not to take this particular

Personal memory assistants, always on life recorders, reputation networks

You might also like

DejaView is now selling a hat or glassesmounted camera and microphone

And PMAs won’t just be standalone devices.