The Panopticon is a building, a prison, in which the inmates believe they are being watched by many jailors, but is so constructed that it really only requires one. But the belief that the inmates behaviour is being seen is thought to be enough to control them.
Now we are "swimming in sensors and drowning in data" these days. But what if, just maybe, the recent revelations by Edward Snowden are part of the best psy-op conceived so far? What if the NSA isn't really reading everything we email or say on the phone? What if all they need to do is make us think that they can?
This isn't to say that the technology isn't there, or won't be soon. I was at a recent conference meeting where a Clinical Psychologist, free from all irony, asked us technologists if we could devise a way to make a machine to tell if patients are taking their tablets, and as they may be being treated because they think machines and computers are watching them, to make this new device unseen and unobtrusive.
But for now, maybe this is more like the race to have the biggest atom bomb. Instead of megatonnes of explosive material we should be thinking in megatonnes of explosive information. Maybe the NSA/USA needs to be seen to know all, know more, than the opposition.
Now we are "swimming in sensors and drowning in data" these days. But what if, just maybe, the recent revelations by Edward Snowden are part of the best psy-op conceived so far? What if the NSA isn't really reading everything we email or say on the phone? What if all they need to do is make us think that they can?
This isn't to say that the technology isn't there, or won't be soon. I was at a recent conference meeting where a Clinical Psychologist, free from all irony, asked us technologists if we could devise a way to make a machine to tell if patients are taking their tablets, and as they may be being treated because they think machines and computers are watching them, to make this new device unseen and unobtrusive.
But for now, maybe this is more like the race to have the biggest atom bomb. Instead of megatonnes of explosive material we should be thinking in megatonnes of explosive information. Maybe the NSA/USA needs to be seen to know all, know more, than the opposition.
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