Project Glass: Google's Panopticon

You may have come across a recent video by Google, for their new product concept - Project Glass. It is a proposal for a new kind of eye-wear, which is expected to revolutionise the wearer's daily life. It will do this by immersing the wearer in a networked augmented reality. The video below will show you what an augmented reality could look like. While it may be a few years before you don a pair of Google Glasses, it is important to think of the implications that this product could have on your everyday life.

Project Glass Promo video, released by Google on April 4th 2012

As I type this, I am conscious that I am using a Google product (Blogger). I do not set out to critique the company itself. These criticisms are well made elsewhere. What I am looking at is the technology that this proposal envisions, and the impact that this will have on everyday life. The key feature I will talk about is the possibility to record aspects of your daily experience, with the in-built video camera. This could have a significant impact on everyday life. This post will focus on the possibility of increased surveillance,  which products such as this could offer. It will relate it to Michael Foucault's theory of discipline and power. Specific attention will be made to his use of Jeremy Bentham's 18th Century prison design, which was intended to keep inmates under constant surveillance; or in fact give them the impression of being under constant surveillance. What will emerge is an image of the future as an ever immersive panopticon of consumer society.

The other day, as I walked into college, a car slowed down on the opposite side of the road and the driver threw an egg out of his window at me. Luckily, his end-of-term prank was not the success he hoped for. He missed!  What he did not expect was for me to turn around, take out my phone, and snap a photograph of his number plate! As he saw me take out my phone and point it at his car, he immediately put the foot down and sped off. Unfortunately, I didn't get the photo in time, so I was unable to catch the number plate registration. But what if the technology was not so cumbersome. What if the incident had already been recorded by the pair of glasses I was wearing. In that situation, it could have been a lot different. I would have two options. 1. Call the police and report the individual; or 2. Start a social media smear campaign against the egg thrower by uploading a video of the incident to YouTube. I'm not sure that I would take either of these actions, so I should really include option: 3. Laugh off the incident, and be glad I didn't end up with scrambled eggs all over my face! However,  people have already taken acts of anti-social behaviour into their own hands. The video below, shows the power of the Smart-phone to capture anti-social incidents.

"Racist Woman on Tram"

While I am not comparing an immature college student throwing an egg, with a racist outburst, there is a similarity in that they would both be considered unacceptable public behaviour. We are already in an age of increasing surveillance. Actions carried out in public can be captured more easily than ever before, and shared at a phenomenal speed. No longer is video surveillance restricted to the CCTV system in your local bank. It is now mobile and omnipresent. According to research carried out by Red C, 49% of Irish phone users had a smart phone in November 2011. They expect this figure to reach 71% by the end of 2012. More and more people have the ability to record video and upload it seamlessly to the Internet. But what is the impact of this increasing possibility of surveillance? To understand this, we must understand what surveillance is. This is where the work of Michel Foucault is useful.

In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault (1977) charts the rise of the penal system in the 18th and 19th century. In terms of surveillance, Foucault uses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon to explain how it operates. The Panopticon was a prison design in which each cell was arranged in a circle, around a central surveillance core. The prison guards occupying the core would be able to see each cell. However, the view from the cells into the core was obscured. The inmates could not tell if they were being watched, or not. It was the possibility of being seen, which would offer the illusion of surveillance. Foucault uses this example to explain the power of surveillance, whether real or imagined.

Bentham's Panoption

Source Wikimedia Commons

Foucault explains how the Panopticon exerts a power over the inmates by regulating their behaviour, for the fear that they could be observed misbehaving. He also applied this model to other institutions such as schools and hospitals. The Panopticon, although never built to the original form, is a useful metaphor. Foucault uses it to explain the institutionalisation of public life, and the creation of a world of self-regulating members of society. With this in mind, I propose that Project Glass is an example of a particular form of institutionalisation; the consumerisation of public life.

Google are proposing a surveillance machine, which I believe will not only become a desirable product, but also an essential one. Imagine the use that this eye-wear could have if you became the victim of a crime. You could corroborate your story with video evidence.  Consider the fact that a mobile phone can provide someone with a sense of safety when  walking in a strange place alone. If your phone is in your hand, a call for help is only a keystroke away. With the advent of the technology envisioned in Project Glass, any experience could be recorded. The watchful eye of the passerby becomes a surveillance machine, with playback. If this is to be the case, we could see  a nation of hyper-connected surveillance machines, acting as a deterrent to crimes in public places. No longer will crimes need to be reported based on witness reports, which are limited by what they can remember. With devices such as Project Glass, witnesses could upload their video recording of the event to the local law authorities via their social media interface. However, this could have it's downsides.

All forms of behaviour that is considered deviant, or socially unacceptable, will be subject to observation and recording by those who wear a Project Glass product. It will be easy to record a video of somebody vandalising a bus shelter, and then post it to your local law authorities' Facebook page. It will not be much different from the way people currently share videos on their friend's internet profile, of cats "doing the craziest things". But where does this leave space for legitimate acts of protest or political decent? How can one engage in behaviour which is outside of the social norms if public space is full of networked surveillance machines?

The truth is, we have already entered the surveillance era. George Orwell's book, 1984, was a visionary portrayal of a dystopian surveillance society. With the Telescreen in each room, one never could tell if they were being watched or not. The smart-phone has put a video recorder in the pockets of many, and their penetration continues to increase. We can see the  impact of the video above, which captures one woman's racist abuse on a tram in London, which has had hundreds of thousands of views on video sharing websites, such as YouTube. I believe that Project Glass is one of many technologies that could become an essential part of everyday life in the near future. These technologies encourage us to step into an augmented reality shaped by technology companies. The world around us will become interactive, overlaid with data. This will be one of biggest steps away from reality we will take. However, the ability to take this step, will be based on being able to afford it.

The advent of the mobile phone has already seen the breaking down of spatial barriers. It has changed the way we live. In the near future, we may slip on our Project Glass eye-wear, or maybe our Apple iGlasses when we leave our home. In doing so, we will move further and further away from traditional urban life. Instead, we will be taking a step deeper into a technological consumer dreamworld. Here we will constantly surveil each other, and keep digital records of our activity. This will be ready to be used if someone steps out of line. And at that stage, we may finally realise that the R&B musican Rockwell was right all along back in 1984, when he released his song, with Michael Jackson on chorus singing: I always feel like somebody's watching me! The era of the virtual consumer panopticon, brought to us by Google, could be closer than we think!

Rockwell, 1984

The Zombie Flaneur

This post will explore two of my favourite topics: Zombies, and Shopping Malls. I will explain how the Zombie genre helps us to understand the fears and concerns of contemporary society. This is based on the increasing tendency to insulate ourselves off from the dangers of the world outside by creating highly controlled spaces such as the shopping mall. I will compare this tendency with Walter Benjamin's image of the aloof city dweller of nineteenth century Paris,  the Flaneur, and describe what I term the Zombie Flaneur who walks the malls of contemporary society.

One of the most influential people in the Zombie genre has been George A. Romero. He directed some of the most well known films, including Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978). It is the latter film which I will discuss because the plot of the film and the political climate at the time of release in 1978 have a striking resonance.

"when there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth"

Dawn of the Dead 1978

As the Dawn of the Dead hit cinemas in 1978 it was at the end of a period of tremendous growth of the post-war American economy. The era between 1950 and 1980 is what Margaret Crawford (1992) terms the "golden era of the malling of America". During this period over 30,000 regional malls were built across the United States. These suburban centres of consumerism promised the dream world of consumer fantasy for all. These new spaces were free from the vagaries of city life, with free parking, air conditioning, and pedestrian friendly walkways. The mall is where suburbanites came to experience life outside home and the workplace. The mall  was built for a lifestyle based on cheap oil and the automobile. However, the prosperity which had characterised the post-war years came under increasing pressure in the 1970's across the Western World. During this decade, oil became a weapon used in political conflict. 

The first economic shock came with the oil crisis of  October 1973, which was brought about by  reduction in the supply of oil by the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). The concept of scarcity emerged again for the first time in decades. The spectre of increasing oil prices haunted the economy. This was followed by the energy crisis of 1979 following the Iranian Revolution, and in 1980 during the Iran Iraq war. It became clear that our dependence on oil, made our society especially vulnerable. This was also accompanied by an increasing environmental movement, which had been gaining momentum ever since the publication of Rachel Carlson's Silent Spring in 1962. It was clear that we would need to change our ways.

"We have spawned our own savagery, soon it will consume us all"

Released in the midst of this period of economic uncertainty, the Dawn of the Dead offered a shocking image of a dystopian future, where society has been destroyed by a zombie virus.  It uncovers our true savagery. Movie trailers, such as the one above reflect the concerns of the time. In the film, the survivors of the zombie plague, seek refuge in a suburban mall. The space in which most of this film is set is typical of the 30,000 regional malls built across the United States over the previous 20 years. This mall could be anywhere in Suburban America. In the trailer, the scale of the mall can be seen; a large box shaped structure surrounded by acres of surface parking. As the survivors barricade themselves in the mall, they slowly regain a sense of "normality". Once the doors have been secured, and the zombies kept at bay, the survivors revert to mall activity. They try on clothes in the fashion stores, and try out the equipment in the sporting goods store. In an attempt to get away from the zombie plague outside, they revert to the dreamworld of consumer society.

Here in this hermetically sealed shopping world the survivors can escape the apocalypse outside. Needless to say, this does not last, and without ruining the film for anyone who hasn't seen it, the zombies somehow manage to get into the mall, and plenty of zombie savagery ensues. The zombie, represents the savagery of humanity and it shows the ultimate danger that we will destroy ourselves with our own actions. If we read the film in this manner, it becomes a scathing critique of consumer society. This critique still stands if we look at the increasingly important position shopping has gained in our lives. The video below shows a swarm of people queueing for the opening of a Primark Store in London in 2007. This is not a crowd of zombies, but a crowd who have been promised a bargain. How does this relate to our understanding of Urban life before the mall?

Primark, Oxford Street, Opening day October 2007

Walter Benjamin embraces the concept of the Flaneur in his unfinished work the Arcades Project. The word comes from the French masculine noun flâneur, which can be interpreted as a "stroller" or "loafer". The use of the term is linked back to Baudelaire, who used it to describe someone who walks the city in order to experience it. Benjamin uses the concept of the flaneur in his analysis of the Parisian arcade. These spaces had been the product of the bourgeoisie of the early to mid-nineteenth century and were part of the physical reality that Baudelaire describes in his writing. The Flaneur retains a sense of autonomy and consumes the city as a spectacle. Benjamin may have considered himself a flaneur, and the Arcades Project became an unfinished collection of notes and observations on these spaces. But what has happened since then?

The arcades were superseded by the department stores throughout Europe from 1850's onwards. In turn, self service stores such as Woolworths, and EPA in Sweden again changed the way people shopped and the way they experienced consumerism. No longer did the shopper have to study the window displays of the arcade to find what they wanted, now they were encouraged to find what they didn't know they wanted in the aisles of the self-service store. The 1950's saw the emergence of the first fully enclosed shopping malls in the United States. Southdale Mall (1956) was the first of many such malls to emerge across America. Victor Gruen, the architect of this space, set out to recreate the squares of a European City, in Minnesota. His idea became the standard fit for retail across the country. Shopping Malls became spaces primarily for shopping. Shopping Malls became the centre of life outside the home for many. Where was the Flaneur in this space?

The shopping malls of this period were exurban. They moved shopping, which is one of the prime aspects of commercial life in the city to a remote location, which could mainly only be reached by car. What was different about these spaces, is that they recreated a shopping space free from all the vagaries of urban life. The shopper would no longer have to worry about the weather under the roof of the mall. It was a space where the flaneur could stroll it's wide pedestrian malls without fear of road traffic. But these spaces were different. There were no offices, no pubs, no red light districts. It was the sanitising of life outside the home. Homelessness and begging were not present in the mall. The developers had succeeded in creating a dreamworld of consumer society were the dream of shopping was the key purpose of its existence. There is no room for the  stroller or the lounger in these spaces. These are spaces to consume.

The release of the Dawn of the Dead in 1978 coincides with a turning point in shopping centre development. The first of the postmodern shopping spaces began to emerge around the same time, such as The Toronto Eaton Centre (1977) and Horton Plaza (1985) in San Diego. These spaces were downtown, integrated developments, which marked a return to the city centre in the form of the mall. The soulless shopping spaces of suburbia began to lose their draw. The Shopping Mall was not space for the flaneur to observe urban life. It lacked the sense of surprise or possibility that the city, which Baudelaire, and in turn Benjamin had captured. 

The walkers of the mall become zombie flaneurs. They stroll the identical malls, where the sanitised dream of consumer society creates a world of global brands and similarity across the world. There is no longer surprise, or the chance encounter in the mall. Instead the zombie flaneur flocks to spend money in shopping mall. The vagaries of urban life have been eliminated. Here the flaneur can roam with the rest of the zombie hoards. Like the characters in the mall in Dawn of the Dead, they are destined to flock to this space and observe the dream world at play. Even though the world outside may have appeared ever more strange, the interior of the mall became a bastion of familiarity and predictability. The age of the zombie flaneur had arrived. It is this age that this blog aims to explore. I hope you will join me on the rest of my travels through consumer society.

Lets go shwopping!

The current economic crisis did not bring about the predicted end of Capitalism that we were warned about. Instead we have endured a prolonged recession/depression. The carefree days of frivolous consumer spending that seemed to characterise the previous decade and a half  have become a distant memory for the majority. For economies built around the idea of ever increasing growth in consumer spending, the crisis has created a prolonged decline, with increasing unemployment and economic contraction. Small open economies such as Ireland have been particularly vulnerable.  In Ireland the volume of retail sales (excluding motors) fell by over 15% between March 2008 and March 2012 (CSO, 2012) as the impact of rising unemployment and a major property market crash took their toll. Retailers have had to work harder to get consumers to buy, in light of falling discretionary income, and economic uncertainty. Their customers are no longer willing, or no longer able to consume as much as before. 

In light of falling consumer sentiment retailers have had to come  up with new ways to drag us all back in to their stores with our wallets open. Value is one of the key factors. The disposable fast paced nature of fashion, has been accelerated by high-street stores such as Primark and H&M, who brought affordable fast fashion to all. Primark, or Penneys in the Republic of Ireland, has prospered in the recession. However, as fashion became more affordable and thus more democratic, new problems emerged. The avalance of stuff we have consumed is begining to occupy our homes and take over our lives. Not to worry though, a bastion of the British High street is on hand to give us a helping hand.

"M&S have a big idea... Shwopping"

The actress, Joanna Lumley is fronting a new advertising campaign for the British retailer Marks & Spencer with the tag-line "lets go shwopping". A plummy voice and a catchy tag-line aims to get people to stop, listen - and go shwopping! The idea behind the campaign is to encourage shoppers to swop out their old/unwanted clothes and buy new ones. The inducement is that you will receive a money off voucher to spend in-store and you will also be helping their partner charity Oxfam, who will re-use your old clothing, either by selling them in their retail stores or by recycling them.  Marks & Spencer want you to raid your wardrobe for the clothes that lurk in the back and that you never wear. They want the ones that no longer fit the way they used to, the jumper your grandmother bought you which is two sizes too big, or that rude novelty t-shirt you purchased on the Internet at 2.00am one night after the pub. Here we are presented with the ultimate solution to an overflowing wardrobe. No longer do we have to look at a wardrobe full of our fashion faux pas. Any guilt over a wardrobe full of clothes you never wear can easily be expunged by engaging in the act of shwopping! This is shopping for the recession wary world. 

This campaign aims to recast the way we think about shopping. It illustrates the manner in which contemporary consumption operates. It has moved beyond the simple marketing of a product. It has now turned to marketing a lifestyle. It signifies the quest for authenticity that contemporary consumers strive to achieve. This could be seen in the rise of the designer logo emblazoned clothing of the 1990's. Wearing clothing with logos such as Calvin Klein or Tommy Hilfiger, allowed the consumer to buy into the aura associated with the brand. This has evolved to the branding of complete lifestyle experiences. Retailers that have been most successful have aligned themselves with an authentic "way of life" . Step into an Urban Outfitters store and you will see a particular version of urban life which is a carefully choreographed image of what the young urban dweller should consume to achieve this life. The idea of 'swhopping' is creating an aura of an authentic environmentally sound lifestyle.

What began as seemingly earnest attempts to make do with less at the start of the economic crisis saw the emergence of swop shops, second-hand clothes stores, and the increasing popularity of eBay. On-line retailers like ASOS created a market for young urban fashion consumers to sell their pre-owned, and vintage fashion items, so that they can in turn purchase more consumer items. These increasingly popular activities, give the impression that they are the exact opposite of the rampant consumerism of before. They re-use old clothing, and embrace the idea that products are made to last and can be repaired and renewed. While this may have been the ideal, it was not long before this had been appropriated by mainstream consumer society.

Vintage clothing is now a distinctive style in most of the mainstream fashion retailers. They offer the reproduction of authentic vintage clothing, which is even better than the real thing. It is free of funky stains and musky smells and on the surface is more appealing than the real thing. What is more important is the aura that becomes associated with the product. By buying the item you are attempting to get closer to the aura of the original item of clothing it was based on, or the music or fashion movement that made it popular in the first place. This is where we need to turn to the work of twentieth century cultural analysis Walter Benjamin.

Benjamin was a prolific writer on the experience of European urban life in the early twentieth century before his untimely death on the Franco-Spanish border in 1940, as he tried to escape Nazi occupied France. In his 1936 essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he explores the concept of Aura. He explains how the reproduction of a piece of art cannot recreate the aura associated with the original piece. In the past week (02 May, 2012) we can see that Edward Munch's The Scream was sold for over €91 million. The value attached to the original is not the same as a poster print you buy in your local shopping centre. While they may both look the same, the reprint or reproduction lacks the authenticity. Society places value on authenticity. Technology allows us to reproduce art, and it allows us to get closer to the authentic experience, however it has not yet succeeded in recreating the authentic experience of the piece. Contemporary consumer society reproduces culture and tries to bring the shopper closer to the aura of an authentic lifestyle experience. It recreates lifestyles for us to purchase in our local shopping centre. What is the Aura that Marks & Spencer is trying to recreate here?

James T. Twitchwell in his book, Lead us into Temptation: The Triumph of American Materialism (1999) speaks of the Terror of thrash and the central position it has in consumer culture.

“Trash is the lipstick on the collar, the telltale blond hair, cheek-smudge.”

Trash or rubbish as we like to call it on this side of the Atlantic is the evidence or remnants created by our consumer society. The abundance of cheap consumer items leads to the crisis of storage in our homes. We then have to invest money in storage solutions for our stuff - perhaps convert our garage, build a shed, or even hire a storage unit to hide the amount of stuff we have amassed. Beyond this there is the problem of disposal and the amount of material we are sending to landfill. This advert provides the ultimate solution... shwopping. We are not only making room for more items in our homes, we are dealing with the guilt of consumer society too. Marks & Spencer have grasped this idea full on with their Plan A strategy. In their 2011 report on the progress of Plan A, Richard Gillies, the director of Plan A CSR and sustainable business  explains that "Backed by a strong business case, Plan A is at the heart of the exciting new growth plans for M&S both in the UK and internationally."

M&S Cork May 2012

Swhopping is example of how capitalism adjusts and incorporates anti-capitalist ideas, such as swopping and bartering, into an act of consumption. Capitalism has adjusted to suck us all back in, with the illusion of austere, thoughtful, almost therapeutic consumption. While Marks & Spencer have partnered with Oxfam before on a similar scheme, this is a major step up in terms of publicity. Shwopping is being sold as a way to buy into a environmentally and socially responsible way of life. Plan A is the pathway by which M&S will help their shoppers to live a greener life, and continue buying. However, what M&S are really doing, particularly in this campaign is reproducing a Utopian environmentally sound dreamworld. They will take away your unloved items of clothing and allow you to buy newer more 'authenticly improved' items of clothing. This is were we get closer to understanding how consumer society needs to operate to maintain itself.

"... and I encourage you all to go shopping more"

G.W. Bush, December 20th, 2006

The global economic crisis has changed the way we shop. Capitalism has adjusted to respond to these changes. However, some of this crisis stems from over-consumption in the recent past. While we deal with the hangover of lifestyle debt, and economic and environmental uncertainty, retailers have to work harder to encourage us to shop. As Joanna Lumley explains "Our aim is to recycle as many clothes as we sell and change shopping forever". Marks and Spencer, and every other retailer at that, don't care how you do it, as long as you keep shopping. This will keep the dream of consumer capitalism alive as customers chase the aura of authentic lifestyle experiences. So lets all get out there and go shwopping, shopping, or just go on and start buying all that stuff you don't really need again. Consumer society needs YOU to keep the dream alive!