The Surveillance of Mediated Copresence

We often use technology to bridge the distances we find ourselves faced with. If we cannot be together, we send a text, call, or video message to each other. Before these digital mediations, we would maybe use a landline or send a letter.

On June 16, 1593, Henry IV of France wrote to his mistress

I have waited patiently for one whole day without news of you; I have been counting the time and that’s what it must be. But a second day–I can see no reason for it, unless my servants have grown lazy or been captured by the enemy, for I dare not put the blame on you, my beautiful angel: I am too confident of your affection–which is certainly due to me, for my love was never greater, nor my desire more urgent; that is why I repeat this refrain in all my letters: come, come, come, my dear love.

Faced with absence, we revert to lesser versions to feel closeness to the other. The more advanced our technology gets, the more we add features to our ability to be together, and yet, mere mediated presence is never enough.

Erving Goffman wrote in “Behavior in Public Spaces: Notes on the social organizing of gatherings” that: “Copresence renders persons uniquely accessible, available, and subject to one another.”

What he meant was that to be in the presence of other individuals fundamentally changes the nature of interactions and relationships, making people more open, receptive, and accountable to each other. Co-presence is more than being together in the same space or being able to share a digital platform.

When we are copresent, we are physically and socially available for interaction, making it easier to initiate and engage in communication. We are within range of each other’s senses and perceived by others, who in turn are perceived by us. Co-presence, therefore, signifies a readiness to interact and be engaged, fostering a sense of readiness and mutual attentiveness that may not exist in situations of mere co-location. It creates a dynamic where individuals are not simply observers but active participants in shaping the social environment and influencing each other’s experiences and behaviors.

Think about the co-presence created by the three floating dots in a text conversation. Naturally, the affordances of text mean that the feelings of presence are significantly truncated. We cannot see, smell, or hear the other – and yet a text can create a deep sense of co-presence because of the intimate history that has been built both inside and outside the digital platform.

The three floating dots, or “ellipsis” as they are more formally known, have a better, but lesser-known name. They are “suspension points”, a more apt descriptor since they highlight the pause, hesitation, or trailing off in speech or writing.

The suspension points not only keep those waiting glued to the screen, but they also allow those waiting to sense that something is happening to the sender, the conversation is not over, but there could be many reasons for the delay…

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Orwellian

Despite not being a big fan of biographies, I am very much enjoying The Ministry of Truth: A biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey, which, with its focus on the book, tells the story of Orwell in a fascinating new (to me) light. It’s also a great way of talking about the impact of the world on Orwell’s thinking, and the impact of Orwell’s writing on the world.

Books like these are filled with great ideas and wonderful small nuggets of information. My favorite is the word Orwellian was coined by Mary
McCarthy, in her essay on fashion magazines “Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue” published in The Reporter on August 1, 1950.

The Orwellian future was a “without content or point of view beyond its proclamation of itself, one hundred and twenty pages of sheer presentation, a journalistic mirage”, McCarthy continues

The articles, in fact, seem meant not to be read but inhaled like a whiff of scent from the mystic… Nobody, one imagines, has read them, not even their authors: Grammatical sentences are arranged around a vanishing point of meaning.

Text, without content, that hasn’t been read, and nobody will read…  But it will be consumed.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Baby Surveillance

Surveillance as certainty

There is a beautiful depiction of a Mother and Child by Christian Krohg (1883) in the Norwegian National Museum in Oslo. The mother and child are a common theme that runs through the entire history of art, with works using the motif to symbolize themes such as fertility, humanity, redemption, love, nurture, and duty. Quite often, the mother is seen nurturing her baby, as with the portrait Lady Mary Boyle nursing her son Charles by Sir Godfrey Kneller (1690), which is the earliest depiction of a mother breastfeeding her own child in British and Irish portraiture.

Krogh attempts to capture a moment of the life of mother and child. The scene is a section of a bedroom. In the foreground, there is a red cradle with a sleeping baby; the background is taken up with a bare wall and a part of a bed with a cover similar in color to the bland wall. It is in the midsection that this painting becomes interesting. The mother is sitting on the chair, hanging over the end of the bed. One arm is in her lap, the other rests on the cradle, and she is asleep. The artist has captured the point in the life of a young mother when exhaustion takes over; it’s a very real moment in life, but a very unusual artistic representation of motherhood.

Aside from the joys of parenting, it remains a time of intense emotional and physical labor, uncertainty, and worry. Parents spend a lot of time attempting to ascertain if they are parenting correctly, removing potential hazards, and keeping a watchful eye on their growing offspring. Given the stressful nature of this period in our lives, it is natural that we have developed different technologies at different times to cope with and help our children lead healthy lives.

In an attempt to keep our kids safe (and alive), we developed baby monitors, nanny cams, and added ever more surveillance equipment ever closer to our babies (Check out Tama Leavers’ work, for example, Intimate surveillance and Born Digital). Today, any parent can get “FDA-cleared monitors that bring medical-grade monitoring to your home.”* Sounds impressive? But what does it mean? Here are definitions from Google AI overview…

FDA cleared

“FDA cleared” means a medical device has been shown to be substantially equivalent to a legally marketed device already cleared or approved by the FDA. This process is typically for lower to moderate-risk devices (Class I and II). It indicates the device is safe and effective for its intended use, but doesn’t necessarily mean it has undergone the same rigorous testing as an “FDA approved” device.

Medical grade

“Medical-grade” generally refers to materials, products, or equipment that are designed, manufactured, and tested to meet specific safety and performance standards for use in healthcare settings. This often includes rigorous testing for biocompatibility, toxicity, and effectiveness, ensuring they can be safely used near patients. While the term isn’t always formally defined, it implies a higher level of quality and reliability compared to standard consumer products.

The short version is that these words sound great but mean nothing, promise nothing. The selling point of devices such as this is that they will take out the uncertainty and grant the parent peace of mind through science!

Selling surveillance

The technology promises to create a form of order out of chaos. In the stressful unknown that is parenting, we see the ways in which the parent grasps at the promise of data to act as a remedy for the unknown. Naturally, technology companies rise to the occasion and provide an array of surveillance technologies that both overpromise and underdeliver.

This is a great example of Technocapitalism, a system that describes the interplay between capitalism and technology, influencing economic structures, labor markets, and social relations. Within technocapitalism the market is created by playing up the fears and uncertainties of everyday life. Then the future user has to be convinced that not only can the technology solve their problem, but that it would be directly irresponsible not to take personal responsibility for resolving their newfound and possibly overexaggerated fears.

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  • The same company’s terms and conditions “Many of our Products are consumer products and are not medical devices, are not intended for use as a medical device or to replace a medical device. They do not and are not intended to diagnose, cure, treat, alleviate or prevent any disease or health condition or investigate, replace or modify anatomy or any physiological process.”
Posted on by Mathias Klang

A flourishing of surveillance microcosms

The what and why of surveillance microcosms

 

Surveillance

Like many others, my first thoughts about surveillance came from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four; the dark vision of Big Brother watching was my introduction to dystopias and their need to control every aspect of our lives, which depends heavily on surveillance. Interestingly, Orwell left 85% of the population of Oceania outside the surveillance regime. The proles were controlled in a more Huxleyan way through cheap alcohol, pop music and sex. As most authoritarian states have shown us, this is not going to happen, even the uneducated, disinterested proles will be kept under careful watch.

The first uses of the concept of surveillance began during the French Revolution, where the Convention formed the provisional revolutionary government. To deal with external threats as well as internally with popular discontent, inadequate food distribution, inflation, legislative factionalism, and revolts, the administration formed two national committees: The Comité de Surveillance (Committee of Surveillance) and the Comité de Sûreté Générale (Committee of Public Safety). The Convention decreed that committees of surveillance should be formed in each commune of France and larger cities. These were charged with uncovering anyone suspected of being enemies or traitors to the nation.

From the beginning, the goal of surveillance is to find those who are not following the orthodoxy of the time.

Microcosms

Whatever the miasma touched on contact with the microcosm it tainted, and then spread itself steadily through the healthy living material ‘like the dyeing or staining of a cloth’. Virginia Smith (2007) Clean: a history of personal hygiene and purity p 98.

Most of our interest in surveillance is connected with the ability to practice it. Surveillance isn’t about monitoring or looking; it is a high form of bureaucracy requiring technologies and practices to be used to categorize, classify, and evaluate individuals and groups, often leading to discriminatory outcomes and reinforcing existing social hierarchies.

This also means that, for the most part, surveillance is carried out by powerful organizations over relatively powerless individuals. Early surveillance was the arm of the state. Later technology enabled similar work to be carried out by corporations. Now, when technology has ‘trickled down’ to individuals, surveillance is no longer about the powerful looking at the powerless.

A byproduct of surveillance capitalism has been the democratization of the powers of surveillance. Sophisticated surveillance systems are easily added to our existing communications infrastructures, and sometimes they are preinstalled in the devices we already own.

The plural makes this whole thing more interesting, doesn’t it? This work is not about a single microcosm, where we can see reflections of the larger world. The plural is intended to remind us all that we are constantly seeing and being seen in several overlapping microcosms.

What’s this all about?

This collection of texts is a study of the ways in which our easy access to the sophisticated tools of authoritarian bureaucracy will change the ways in which we see each other and the ways in which we choose to be seen.

I am writing this now as I have been working on (and hope to finish soon) a book of the same title. One of the difficulties I face with the book is choosing what to include and what to leave out. These texts will cover part of the book, but more importantly, will allow me to go down those fascinating rabbit holes that cannot be included in the final product. From the book draft:

The technology in focus here is the tools and knowledge available to the individual and how these tools create surveillance microcosms where we are the subject and object of our surveillance, where we are as invested in being seen as we are in looking. Therefore, this is a book about the subtle interplay between intimacy and surveillance. It is about seeing another, to know them, via techne, but also about being seen, and seeing oneself through techne. It is, as the Canadian poet Jhave Johnston suggested after hearing an early presentation, about the permeability, osmosis and connectivity of networks of interdependent beings.

Goals

The goal of this space is to share ideas and ideally get feedback. If that goal does not materialize, then the secondary goal is that I get to work on presenting ideas, and if nothing else, this is just me yelling my ideas to the void, and hopefully improving my grammar.

I hope to publish a text or two per week. But as with all experiments, this is the intention, and we shall see where we end up.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Calling in the troops

As my university joins the sad list of institutions overreacting to protesters this popped up in my newsfeed

One of the oddities of our age is that the professional managers that have taken over the running of universities show themselves so unimaginative and so insecure with their authority. They echo each other’s slogans, and they role-play leadership from behind a large desk. Even as risk and reputation managers they are a flop. This is not just an American thing (although the armed snipers on rooftops are).

it’s from Dear University President, You Could Run Out the Clock; a Plea for Repressive Tolerance—and Renewal by Eric Schliesser


It’s always a sad surprise when universities are prepared to trot out their academics as ‘experts’ when it suits them, but refuse to listen to them when it would be prudent.

Universities love their slogans, mottos, and missions, but actions speak louder than words. Calling in overly armed riot police with zip ties is a hell of a lesson for students (and faculty).

Posted on by Mathias Klang

A certain interior solitude

Came across this quote by Thomas Merton a very interesting character (an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion.) 

“In actual fact, society depends for its existence on the inviolable personal solitude of its members. Society, to merit its name, must be made up not of numbers, or mechanical units, but of persons. To be a person implies responsibility and freedom, and both these imply a certain interior solitude, a sense of personal integrity, a sense of one’s own reality and of one’s ability to give himself to society–or to refuse that gift.”

Merton – Thoughts on Solitude

The quote was part of the podcast episode Never Mind the Stasi, where the host Hari Kunzru explains: “without privacy, without the ability to make basic decisions for yourself, society could not exist. Unless you have freedom to act and can take responsibility for your actions; you are not human in society, just a function, a cog in a totalitarian machine.”

Kunzru is the host of my current favorite podcast – bingeing it now called “Into the Zone” after listening to the episode on cyberspace, I immediately began listening to all the episodes in order.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Facial Recognition Webinar

Live Facial Recognition: People, Power, and Privacy in the Surveillance Machine

Drs. Nora Madison and Mathias Klang

Live Facial Recognition (LFR) represents the next evolution in the surveillance society. This talk will provide an overview of the development and implementation of LFR systems, discuss the ethical implications of LFR, and briefly introduce techniques and technologies for avoiding or subverting LFR. The goal is to demonstrate the need for a deeper understanding and societal debate before uncritically accepting this far-reaching threat to our privacy.

Jul 30, 2020 04:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_jZxQ36haSsyhPRvhZQVbnA

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Why not to like Trump

The following cites Quora as the original source, but no link to that source is ever provided.

“Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response.

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. 

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty.

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness.  

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.
• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.  

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Happiness in the time of covid

Ending a course is always bittersweet. I am happy it’s over but we are finally a functioning group and everyones personalities are starting to show. Ending a course online due to covid was going to suck because it felt like it was all going to fade away.

So for the last class, I asked my students to share a picture of something that makes them happy and after the usual stuff I ended with the presentation of the pictures. Best Zoom ever, here are the slides

https://klangable.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Happiness2.pptx

Posted on by Mathias Klang