A decade after ‘Surveillance Imaginaries’: how fiction helped shape the future
24th September, 2033.
On the tenth anniversary of the publication of their 2023 paper, ‘Surveillance Imaginaries: Learning from Participatory Speculative Fiction’, which appeared in the 21(3) issue of Surveillance & Society, authors Anna Wilson and Jen Ross reflect and discuss what led them to write it, and how it may have contributed to the changes seen in the collection, sharing and use of data in the HE sector.
Anna: I remember when we started the work that led to our paper — we were both genuinely worried by things happening within our own universities and beyond. It felt like the manipulative and extractive data practices of companies like Amazon and Facebook were spreading into the Higher Education sector, but in a haphazard way. Universities were buying into the idea that behavioural data had value — but without thinking about what kinds of value do and should matter within the sector.
Jen: Yes, and we knew that a lot of the people whose jobs included the roll-out and championing of surveillance-capable technologies and systems were feeling really uncomfortable about what was going on. Sure, there was some enthusiasm for the personalisation possibilities of e.g. Learning Analytics, but there was also real trepidation about the infusion of Business Intelligence approaches into educational spaces. The trouble was, people weren’t talking about their concerns, out of a combination of loyalty and precarity. That’s why we wanted to find a way of letting people talk without feeling like they were telling tales.
Anna: Yes and perhaps it’s a bit ironic that we get people to make up stories rather than tell tales! But it worked, and we were able to write Surveillance Imaginaries as a result. Obviously we hoped it would have some impact …
Jen: .. but we never imagined it would have quite the effect that it did. I guess it was partly timing: late 2023 was when people were starting to get caught up in the GenAI Panics. Universities suddenly realised that if they didn’t get their acts together, they were going to face the kind of campus unrest that we hadn’t seen since May ‘68.
Anna: And then ‘Surveillance Imaginaries’ became the basis for the Privacy Notice and T&Cs Guidelines issued by NADPO* — that was probably the catalyst for the steps taken by the universities that eventually signed the No-Track Pledge.
Jen: Exactly! And once that core group did, pretty much everyone else had to do the same …
*National Association of Data Protection Officers
