What do the Flemish Scrollers, the Vegas orb thing, Ray-Ban, and The Circle have in common?
Well, they are all glimpses of our shared always-on-camera, always being watched-and-rated future where constant recording of everything (and the constant judgement that comes with it) becomes normal - the water we swim in.
The Flemish Scrollers is an web project dedicated to shaming Belgian politicians for browsing their phones on the job. It uses AI facial recognition to name and shame and monitor the time each parliamentarian spends looking down rather than looking up. People are gleeful about it. Naughty politicians caught! But they forget that we are also being watched and rated and shamed and privileged - by our governments, our bosses and even our Meta-AI-Ray-Ban colab wearing friends and strangers too. We’re in the panopticon together, as described in nauseating detail in the book, The Circle. Just like all the spectators in the Orb opening last week we’re all recording their experience through a screen rather than living it, life is different when it’s a constantly directed live broadcast show - isn’t it?)
Do we like it here?
And can you opt out from an entire global society that’s opted in to this idea - that everything and everyone can and must be recorded at all times- that body cams and facial recognition are right and even rights?
I don’t know.
I also don’t know who is going to actually watch that footage, or if our everyday sins are even interesting enough to shame us.
But here we are! Smile. You’re on camera and we’re rating your face.
Read more :
Flemish scrollers (it is funny) but also - it is us 😭: https://driesdepoorter.be/theflemishscrollers/
Naked and alone : https://whatthefuturenow.com/2021/07/23/naked-and-alone/
The Circle, pretty much (it’s a bad novel, like Ayn Rand bad unless you’re into that sort of philosophical smut, but it nailed the future) : https://x.com/bronwynwilliams/status/1634116369544273920?s=46&t=4ZnlXYawVpFiG2SlapEWwg
The medium is the message : https://www.linkedin.com/posts/bronwynwilliams_all-the-mgm-sphere-videos-suggest-to-me-that-activity-7114622132629696512-GeYR?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios
We’re not going to be able to resist these : https://www.ray-ban.com/row/ray-ban-stories
Panopticon people