In the opinion of IEET fellow Jamais Cascio, this is not a world of the distant future. He's been talking about it for several years now and expects it to become reality soon -- "probably within the next decade, certainly within the next two."
This won't simply be a world of a single, governmental Big Brother watching over your shoulder, nor will it be a world of a handful of corporate siblings training their ever-vigilant security cameras and tags on you. Such monitoring may well exist, probably will, in fact, but it will be overwhelmed by the millions of cameras and recorders in the hands of millions of Little Brothers and Little Sisters. We will carry with us the tools of our own transparency, and many, perhaps most, will do so willingly, even happily.
I call this world the Participatory Panopticon.
The Panopticon was Jeremy Bentham's 18th century model for a prison in which all inmates could be watched at all times. The term has in more recent years come to have a broader meaning, that of a world in which all of us are under constant surveillance. The proliferation of video gear in the hands of governments and corporations feeds a not unreasonable fear of the panopticon. The dramatic reduction in size of video cameras and the addition of tools for digital analysis have further enhanced that fear.
But in the world of the participatory panopticon, this constant surveillance is done by the citizens themselves, and is done by choice. It's not imposed on us by a malevolent bureaucracy or faceless corporations. The participatory panopticon will be the emergent result of myriad independent rational decisions, a bottom-up version of the constantly watched society.
In Cascio's view (and in mine), this new world of near-total visibility and recall is not necessarily something to be feared. Not, at least, if recording, storage, and access of the data remains in the hands of individuals as part of civil society, and is not monopolized by government or corporations.
Already we're seeing signs of a participatory panopticon coming together -- politicians derailed by gaffes posted on YouTube, unacceptable police actions revealed by private citizen recordings and later punished, and even a few people making constant audio-video records of their own lives, both to protect themselves and to remember later all that they've done and said.
It's not all smooth going, however.
Last month, a citizen in Massachusetts was arrested for using a video cam to record police activity:
A Roman Catholic priest who monitors law enforcement treatment of minorities with a video camera released footage that appears to contradict the police account of his own arrest.
A police report says the Rev. James Manship was confronted and arrested Feb. 19 because he was holding an "unknown shiny silver object" and struggled with an officer who was trying to take it from him. But a 15-second video released this week by Manship's attorneys shows East Haven police Officer David Cari asking Manship, "Is there a reason you have a camera on me?"
"I'm taking a video of what's going on here," Manship replies.
"Well, I'll tell you what, what I'm going to do with that camera," Cari says as he approaches the priest. The tape then goes blank.
So, it will take courage and perseverance to prevail against those who will oppose and perhaps fight a participatory panopticon. Such opposition could come from wrong-headed individuals; other, more worrisome attacks against grassroots transparency and visibility may well come from governments themselves, who will fear losing the ability to control their populace.
It's also possible that courage and perseverance alone won't be enough. The rise of a genuinely powerful participatory panopticon may occur organically, as it were, without intentional planning and structure. Or, it may require an organized effort by one or more groups. Either way, it seems to me that it's something to be welcomed not feared, to be encouraged not stymied, and to be regarded as an absolutely vital part of a future where individual freedoms are valued and protected.