This weeks readings focused on privacy and surveillance. These readings, along with Mushon’s talk really makes me think more about how I feel about data, modeling, and all the politics that go into it. Dealing with data, especially personal data which I find very interesting, used to excite me but now I’m kind of having second thoughts…

‘The Anxieties of Big Data’:

‘Already,margin-ad-right the lived reality of big data is suffused with a kind of surveillant anxiety — the fear that all the data we are shedding every day is too revealing of our intimate selves but may also misrepresent us. Like a fluorescent light in a dark corridor, it can both show too much and not enough.’

• This makes me think about the other day when we looked up Google ad settings, which can tell you what profile of information Google uses to show you ads. I was expecting to be scared given how much I use Google, but then realized that it hardly knew anything about me. It was pretty shockingly wrong… But then I think about the ads I see on Facebook. I can definitely tell they know a good amount of information about me, yet the ads are always just a little off.

‘Surveillant anxiety is always a conjoined twin: The anxiety of those surveilled is deeply connected to the anxiety of the surveillers. But the anxiety of the surveillers is generally hard to see; it’s hidden in classified documents and delivered in highly coded languages in front of Senate committees. This is part of why Snowden’s revelations are so startling: They make it possible for us to see the often-obscured concerns of the intelligence agencies. And while there is an enormous structural power asymmetry between the surveillers and surveilled, neither are those with the greatest power free from being haunted by a very particular kind of data anxiety: that no matter how much data they have, it is always incomplete, and the sheer volume can overwhelm the critical signals in a fog of possible correlations.’

‘These moments demonstrate why the epistemic big-data ambition — to collect it all — is both never-ending and deeply flawed. The bigger the data gets, the more small things can be overlooked. The risk of being seduced by ghost patterns in data increases with the size of the data sets.’

• I like how these previous two quotes touch on what can be overlooked when the constant goal is more more more. We have so much data, yet look at how much we miss.

‘Still, the rapid rise of the term normcore is an indication of how the cultural idea of disappearing has become cool at the very historical moment when it has become almost impossible because of big data and widespread surveillance.’

• Sorry hipsters…

‘But being able to “blend in” or “pass” is a very exclusive form of privilege. In the words of Cat Smith, who writes about disability and fashion, “the ‘look of nothing’ is never going to be available to those who are marked as ‘other’ because the world has already placed identifiable markers on us.”’

• I never really thought about it like this before, but definitely a very real point. Brings us back to Sara Hendren’s talk again.

‘While these tools and techniques of data tracking have now been broadened to ensnare the whole population, their greatest impact is still felt by marginalized communities.’

• Again bringing us back to the digital divide…

‘On the Leakiness of Surveillance Culture, the Corporate Gaze, and What That Has To Do With the New Aesthetic’:

‘surveillance culture is leaky. Primary measurements beget chains of reasoning and implication. Second and third order conclusions can be drawn by clever observers and unintended consequences are the order of the day.’

• This one just brings it all together.

Allison asked us to pick a piece of surveillance art and reflect on it. I chose Surveillance Chess. This project hacks surveillance cameras in London and exchanges them with a game of chess. I mainly chose this one because it made me laugh. I think it’s interesting how it tries to establish two sided communication by turning the camera into a game console because surveillance is totally one sided.

Check out the readings for this week:
‘Surveillance in America’: Interview with Christian Parenti
Anxieties of Big Data: Kate Crawford
On the Leakiness of Surveillance Culture, the Corporate Gaze, and What That Has To Do With the New Aesthetic: Tim Maly
The Mysterious Disappearance of Phil Agre: Andy Carvin
Surveillance and Capture: Two Models of Privacy: Phil Agre