Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

I could write a dozen blog posts about living in the surveillance society, and not make the point as clearly as Michael Zoellner did by writing SurveillanceSaver. There’s nothing that will drive home the point that we’re in the midst of omni-surveillance like someone adapting some of the information flowing from that constant surveillance into casual art¹. It’s easy to dismiss the distributed Panopticon as either paranoid fantasy, or something that’s “only in the movies” when you don’t have to see it. On the other hand, if your desktop is constantly rubbing your face in it…

There’s a new version this week, and there’s a project that you (assuming you have skills) can contribute to. If I wasn’t already underwater with projects queued up I’d do a little work myself on the Windows version.

Oh, and the fact that the Axis network of cameras can be found via Google is also a great illustration of several new kinds of security issues for software in the networked world. But that’s less in your face, of course.

1. OK, maybe it’s a stretch to call a screensaver “art”, but I guarantee that if this had been written up as a concept art installation, rather than a screensaver, that it would have got funding. Bureaucratic definitions aside, I call it art.(back)

Tags: art,spying,surveillance

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Science and Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.