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
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