The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast
Left: Hokusai’s “Great Wave.”Right: A fractal “Dragon,” visualizing the underlying math of iterative growth. “As soon as surveillance technology is installed, first it produces of course a counter reaction of the desire for privacy…but it [also] produces the fact that there are gaps, and as soon as you put up SOME cameras, you see that there are spots that you can’t see. Surveillance constantly wants more of itself. We constantly debate whether we control technology or technology controls us....
The Evolution of Surveillance Part 3: Living in the Belly of the Beast
Left: Hokusai’s “Great Wave.”Right: A fractal “Dragon,” visualizing the underlying math of iterative growth. “As soon as surveillance technology is installed, first it produces of course a counter reaction of the desire for privacy…but it [also] produces the fact that there are gaps, and as soon as you put up SOME cameras, you see that there are spots that you can’t see. Surveillance constantly wants more of itself. We constantly debate whether we control technology or technology controls us....
The Evolution of Surveillance Part 2: Red Queens & Evil Eyes
Left: Eyespots on a caterpillar. Right: Eyespots on a human. ”The man discusses a dream he’s had in which his Manhattan neighborhood has been reduced to a series of canals, and he’s been given a kind of flotation device armed with Jet Skis that can skim the top of the water while everyone around him drowns.” – Gary Shteyngart, “Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer” ”Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” – Red Queen, Lewis Carroll’s Through The ...
The Evolution of Surveillance Part 2: Red Queens & Evil Eyes
Left: Eyespots on a caterpillar. Right: Eyespots on a human. ”The man discusses a dream he’s had in which his Manhattan neighborhood has been reduced to a series of canals, and he’s been given a kind of flotation device armed with Jet Skis that can skim the top of the water while everyone around him drowns.” – Gary Shteyngart, “Confessions of a Google Glass Explorer” ”Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” – Red Queen, Lewis Carroll’s Through The ...
The Evolution of Surveillance Part 1: Burgess Shale to Google Glass
Left: Anomalocaris (painted by John Sibbick). Right: my Google Glass onboarding. “My ten year old comes into my office and he says, ‘Dad, I keep hearing you talk about Big Data. What is this Big Data thing you’re talking about?’ I said to him, ‘Imagine if your whole life you’ve been looking through one eye, and all of a sudden for the first time scientists gave you the ability to open up a second eye. So what you’re getting is not just more data – you’re not just getting more vision, you’re g...
The Evolution of Surveillance Part 1: Burgess Shale to Google Glass
Left: Anomalocaris (painted by John Sibbick). Right: my Google Glass onboarding. “My ten year old comes into my office and he says, ‘Dad, I keep hearing you talk about Big Data. What is this Big Data thing you’re talking about?’ I said to him, ‘Imagine if your whole life you’ve been looking through one eye, and all of a sudden for the first time scientists gave you the ability to open up a second eye. So what you’re getting is not just more data – you’re not just getting more vision, you’re g...
The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic
The London Exhibition’s Crystal Palace, 1851 – arguably, an act of magic. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law Is it acceptable to say that we will likely one day join all things that we observe within a great mind — and yet, by then, we will have discovered even wider, more withdrawn horizons? Is it okay to pose our growing godliness against the stable everyday “I” on its shrinking iceberg, and the plain-er existential fact of...
The Future is Indistinguishable from Magic
The London Exhibition’s Crystal Palace, 1851 – arguably, an act of magic. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” – Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law Is it acceptable to say that we will likely one day join all things that we observe within a great mind — and yet, by then, we will have discovered even wider, more withdrawn horizons? Is it okay to pose our growing godliness against the stable everyday “I” on its shrinking iceberg, and the plain-er existential fact of...
The Future Acts Like You
This will be a theme and variations on the theme of theme and variations. My friends and I were walking dogs the other day on city greenbelt trails, observing how polite and well-behaved the female dogs were when compared to male dogs, how much less likely they were to get riled up by meeting strange pets — and the thought occurred to me (as surely it must have for many others) that if it were up to choice, most people might prefer a female dog for this one reason. How, if we could breed the ...
The Future Acts Like You
This will be a theme and variations on the theme of theme and variations. My friends and I were walking dogs the other day on city greenbelt trails, observing how polite and well-behaved the female dogs were when compared to male dogs, how much less likely they were to get riled up by meeting strange pets — and the thought occurred to me (as surely it must have for many others) that if it were up to choice, most people might prefer a female dog for this one reason. How, if we could breed the ...
