Watching you from all sides
Surveilling & recycling the Prismatic Self
Two days ago, when I launched my blog . o O (Prismatically…) little did I realise that a PRISM of a very different kind was being aired.
I am following it this story as eagerly as everyone else. The rhetoric all round is a hefty combination of fear-mongering and willful complacency. This is really another way in which notions of identity and anonymity are getting entwined in the online sphere, creating confusion as traditional idea of self are challenged in profound ways.
Over the last couple of years, just like everyone else, I’ve been trying to understand the relationship between Internet and me (eg. How much should I share? Can I be me? Am I being influenced?). In that process I’ve developed an analogy that I haven’t seen used by anyone else; garbage-collection/recycling.
Garbage is a natural by-product of our modern lives. Based on our activities and consumption we produce different types of garbage. This a garbage is “information” - about our preferences, behaviors, and habits - all sent to the dump. All forms of information in our lives is treated in this tranactional fashion. We get informed, choose, consume, and dispose of goods (& information) with no residual trace of our action.
Enter recycling. Sometimes, when our waste has alternate uses, or residual benefit it is saved from the dump, broken down and re-purposed. These recycled goods may be for our own benefit, but more that likely for someone else; the benefit of close-loop methods being shared by all. I’ve used this extensively in my information management thinking. The nature of the Internet is that information is stored, shared and tracked - it can’t function any other way - and this information can be broken down into data, to be re-purposed a huge number of societal benefits. Cameras watch me drive down the freeway so that traffic congestion can be provided to other. My purchases are tracked by the store so they know what to restock, when, and even what incentives I may prefer. And most obviously, we all live with the eye of police surveillance to protect us from the misdeeds of others.
This is the challenge for emerging view of the Prismatic Self. How much of our behavior/actions/thoughts are we prepared to share, and which parts of ourselves can we keep our own?
Post-note: This cartoon from The Joy of Tech sums it up very nicely.
