“Black Mirror” surveillance review

Black mirror is one of the most notorious British science fiction TV series created by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. Each series it’s its own self-contained story. The action take place in a modern society where explores the unanticipated consequences of the new technologies.

 There are many shocking episodes, but I will discuss only a few -the ones related with surveillance.

The first episode that I am going to talk about is “Archangel”. I grew up in surroundings where you just open up the doors and let kids play, but the time has changed. Since one time mother had lost her daughter, she decides to get involved in trial period of parenting surveillance. Peace of mind, sense of security – that’s how the Archangel implant was an easy key to a good parenting. Completely safe program allowed to see everything through her child eyes and helped mum to control her daughter well-being. Constant surveillance might be for the safety purposes and willingness to protect, but it is still invasion in privacy.

In the Episode “The entire history of you” the actions go around the ‘grain’, which is an implant that records the entire history of you. The focus is on tech development and on how can it affect your social live. In Scene one, the main character Liam portrayed in the professional meeting. Liam brings some concerns about employers going through data and he emphasise that doesn’t understand how it can be considered as moral and ethical, while he gets a response in a famous line as if you have nothing to hide you shouldn’t mind being recorded and watched. Not a new thing that employers attempting to know what their employees do, and obviously the employers always check the social media of the people that they are thinking to hiring. When Liam leaves the meeting and get in to the taxi to the airport, he keeps reviewing what just have happened in his grain. In the airport he is going through security and as a check-up he gets viewed his last day and then extensively gets asked to replay the whole week.

We can notice similarity of main ideas about memory recording, and possibility to replay it at any given time in the episode of “Crocodile”. But despite the story context, in this episode notion of surveillance is framed in a positive way, as if it is not technology of the story murders would have been left unsolved. 

“White bear” episode gives us an idea about how criminal can potentially be punished in a future. The administration of the park safes money for CCTV in the aspect when public record every move of prisoner named Victoria. The audience is encouraged to take as many pictures and videos as they can, as consequently the torture weapon for the prisoner would humiliation this woman in a broad social level. This episode posing a question whether or not her punishment is worse than death. This episode discusses the ethics of torture, by surveillance and technology methods for punishments that can be offered in a future. 

“Shut up and dance” episode portrays how hackers able to access computers via malware , watch and record people and then blackmail as this happened many times in reality already. In the episode we can see what a teenager and the family guy going through after being blackmailed.

“White Christmas” episodes examine social aspects of technology very closely. The part of surveillance is about technology usage which has taken step further when the main character uses live stream in order to find people social networking account through photographic recognition. He is also able to get other people to pay him to watch other people’s live. This technological insanity reassuring this idea that privacy in a technological age could be turned to nothing worth in a future. As the punishment of that behaviour he is deprived of the basic need to communicate with others, as others are blocked to him and he is blocked to others as well. 

In one way or another, all the above-mentioned episodes involve surveillance in each episode and as we can consequently see, sometimes it helps sometimes it destroys.

References:

1. Youtube.com. (2019). arkangel black mirror – YouTube. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=arkangel+black+mirror+ [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
2. YouTube. (2019). The Entire History of You | Black Mirror. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFCqK81s7Y [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
3. YouTube. (2019). Black Mirror Analysis: Crocodile. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvVIL5-Ckpg&t=114s [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
4. YouTube. (2019). Black Mirror Analysis: White Bear. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eblA9LqKA8&t=125s [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
5. YouTube. (2019). Black Mirror | Shut Up and Dance | Season 3/Ep 3 | Trailer. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG-dkHen-tk [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].
6. Hodges, G. (2019). Black Mirror: White Christmas – The Art of the Plot Twist. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0amBmeBTlc&t=198s [Accessed 27 Mar. 2019].

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“The age of surveillance capitalism the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power” – book review

The term of surveillance capitalism was popularized by the social psychologist and philosopher Shoshana Zuboff. She is the author of the book “The age of surveillance capitalism the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power”. 

This book combines a whole range of themes such as the digital revolution, the evolution of capitalism, the psychological individuality, and human development. Author investigates traditional market capitalism and kind of its transformation that she named “surveillance capitalism”.

According to the author of the book surveillance capitalism is the economic logic and economic pressure of capitalism which disseminates in many ways of meanings around the commodification and personal information. All these factors are driving a new form of capitalism to monitoring online in the purpose of making a profit. 

This new form of capitalism observes private human experience and translates that into behavioural data. This data then is combined with advanced abilities who create predictions of our behaviour. Predictions of what will we do now soon or later. All these predictions are sold to business customers. In a new kind of market place trades exclusively in human futures. This economic logic has now travelled not only form Google to Facebook but also throughout a normal economy, into virtual every economic sector.

Every app that we download is transferring our data to third parties. From the research that has been conducted by the author we can clearly see that our very personal information that we produce to apps going to Facebook and Google, which have created a new marketplace out of our private human experiences.

“At its core, surveillance capitalism is parasitic and self- referential. It revives Karl Marx’s old image of capitalism as a vampire that feeds on labor but with an unexpected turn..”

Shoshana Zuboff

Everything about us is ignored. They don’t have any interest in us -our problems, needs, concerns… Doesn’t matter if we are happy or sad. Doesn’t matter if we’re doing well or poorly. The only matter that they have is to scrape the experience and turn it into data.

Shoshana Zuboff claims that privacy policies by giants’ companies are actually surveillance polices. They say if we have nothing to hide we have nothing to fear , but the fact is what they don’t tell us and according to author what we are forgetting that if you have nothing to hide you are nothing. Everything about us – makes us a unique identity. Inner resources that comes from within from our private realm is private for a reason.

The recent Cambridge Analicyta revelations, had been put most of the people around the world on alert that not everything is ok in a digital world. What is coming next?

References:

1. YouTube. (2019). Age of Surveillance Capitalism: “We Thought We Were Searching Google, But Google Was Searching Us”. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo6K-bPh39M&t=34s [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
2. Naughton, J. (2019). ‘The goal is to automate us’: welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/20/shoshana-zuboff-age-of-surveillance-capitalism-google-facebook [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

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Nineteen Eighty-Four

The organization “Big Brother Watch” originates from very popular political fiction book named “Nineteen Eighty-Four”. Modern society and especially the founder of the organization Matthew Elliott was influenced by this dystopian science-fiction novel and in 2009 was founded a non-profit British organization named Big Brother Watch. In the 21^stcentury, the time of technological revolution, where in a short period of time technologies are replaced by another technologies. Big Brother organization is campaigning and tackling civil liberties and privacy related problems, while revealing and challenging threats to our democratic freedom. 

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the novel that was written by English journalist, novelist and critic George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. The book was launched in 1984, the same year as per name. Author main mission was to cause public awareness of social injustice while being big supporter of democratic socialism. The action of the book is taking place in a state named Oceania. The state is ruled by the party whose leader is Big Brother. The main character is Winston Smith and he hates Big Brother Party. 

Utopia is imagined place, where everything is perfect, while dystopia is exact opposite. And latter is a case of the book, where leaders of the dystopian society try persuading people that government try do their best to protect and take care of their citizens. 

In the Oceania state everyone knows that they can be watched at any given time. High members of the party can not only watch but also record all the activities of the citizens. The purpose of this excessive surveillance is to improve lives of the people. Disobedience citizens disappears. All nation in Oceania can see leader face, because it is everywhere. Big Brother description from the book:” The black moustachioed face gazed down from every commanding corner… BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption said, while the dark eyes looked deep into Winston’s own.” 

In 2003, “The Big Read” of BBC listed the novel at number 8. In 2005, magazine “Time” had chosen the novel as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. The book has been translated into more than 60 languages and in some countries are forbidden.Aldous Huxley’s “Great New World” and Ray Bradbury’s “451 Fahrenheit”, “1984” are considered one of the most famous literary utopias.

Here is a case when fictional story is parallel with a real life. The fictional character Big Brother and the Big Brother is Watching You in contemporary culture have become common terms describing the over-ambition of government or individuals to oversee and control society. Some people think that if there is nothing to hide there is nothing to be afraid of, but privacy is not about something to hide, is a fundamental human right and a fundamental human need, when we don’t have privacy, we feel unsafe.

References:

1. Anon, (2019). [online] Available at: https://study.com/academy/lesson/big-brother-is-watching-you-in-1984-meaning-analysis.htm [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
2. Elliott, M. (2019). Big Brother Watch – Defending Civil Liberties, Protecting Privacy. [online] Bigbrotherwatch.org.uk. Available at: https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
3. Orwell, G. (2019). Nineteen Eighty-Four. [online] En.wikipedia.org. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].

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Panopticon of the Digital Age

More than 200 years ago, English philosopher who lived between 18^thand 19^thcentury Jeremy Bentham designed the concept of panopticon. The building called as hypothetical prison consisted a circular building with cells build into a circular wall and the central observation tower. From the tower you can see into every cell and from every cell you can see that the tower is there. But the tower is designed with blinds and shutters so that the prisoners can’t see into the tower, they can only see that is there so at any moment the prisoners can’t be sure if they are being watched but they know that there is a pretty good chance that it might be.

“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. ”

Karl Marx

Bentham spend 16 years of his life developing ideas on panopticon system and he truly thought that it was designed so well that it was doing the managing job itself and because prisoners don’t know whether or not they are being watched they still were going to behave themselves anyway. The fact that hey have been watched would keep them in line, without using any physical coercive or weapons.

Twentieth-century French philosopher Michel Foucault realised that panopticon can be more than just a building and consist of few main principles: 

• Pervasive power – the tower sees into every cell and sees everything that can go on so they can regulate everything.

•  Obscure power – the tower sees into the cells, but the prisoners can’t see into a tower. And they can’t ever know when how or why they are being observed. 

• Direct violence is replaced by structural violence. – According to Bentham it’s a huge revelation that in order to make the prisoners behave themselves without being coerced and using a chains or beatings, however what he doesn’t realise that the structure of the panopticon itself is coercive. It subjugates the prisoners just by being there. 

• structural violence made profitable. – Bentham thought you can make a panopticon profitable. Make the prisoners work on whatever the project you want and then sell the things they made for profit. The only alternative was just to sit in their cells and eat bread and water. Taking the structural violence and using it for the benefit for those in power.

By using these 4 principles, the people running the panopticon can expand their power into every facet of the prisoner’s life.  And mould them into a kind of obedient workers that they want.

The set of principles that are used for panopticon, Bentham thought, could be used for panopticon hospital, school or mental world, while Foucault realised you can event make a panoptic country. Having said that, he argues that all that surveillance serves the purpose of expanding power, allowing to see further into the prisoner’s cells and regulate what it finds there. 

Snowden showed us just how big the panopticon really was.

We live in a modern age where information considered as a huge treasure. We can easily adapt this hypothetical world onto the real world. The best example of this shift is Edward Snowden revelation in 2013. NSA Contractor revealed that US, UK Australian, New Zealand and Canadian governments were monitoring citizens very personal information.

Panopticon mechanism can help us to understand the reality of the modern world and how constant monitoring defends the power of the ruling class. As surveillance mainly exists not to prevent crime but defending a power of a ruling class. CCTV and surveillance system that have been applied in a real nowadays world work very well on impacting masses.

Referenes:

1. Foucault, M., 1995. Discipline & Punish. 2nd ed. United states: Random house.
2. Jeremy Bentham. 2019. wikipedia. The free encyclopedia. [ONLINE] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org. [Accessed 16 February 2019].
3. Philosophy Tube. (2017). Foucault 2: Government Surveillance & Prison. [Online Video]. 26 May 2017. Available from: https://www.youtube.com. [Accessed: 23 February 2019].
4. CRISOL. Translation services. 2019. surveillance-privacy-digital-panopticon. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.crisoltranslations.com. [Accessed 23 February 2019].