This is how street views of pedestrian areas get made for Apple Maps. I found it creepy and offensive to have this guy wandering our campus. I followed him for a minute, filming the filmmaker, turning the tables. I asked him if he had permission to be on campus. "Not really," he said after repeated inquiries.
Was I irrationally bristling against the information age? Was I harrassing him inappropriately? He’s just earning a buck, poor guy.
The thing is that I see this scene as a harbinger of a time when we’ll all be doing the bidding of the Paradigm. Humans will survive by doing gigs that robots can’t do yet, under watchful cameras controlled by AI.
What do you think? Is this creepy?
Hmm, I'm not sure this is much different from the Google cameras mounted on cars for mapping. Street view campus maps could be useful for new students or visitors too. And while you may be right, this worker has agency and it was his choice to take the job. Maybe I've lived too long in a surveillance state and am not alarmed by this! I think there are causes to champion, but I wouldn't worry about this one.
ReplyDeleteCertainly it's a small thing, and it has its beneficial uses. I do wonder whether we should be complacent about the mapping of the entire world, though. It doesn't have to be this way. Privacy laws in Germany have prevented Google (and Apple) from putting images of private houses online. There are no street views of residential neighborhoods in Passau, for instance.
DeleteAha! There were some last I checked, it is individual houses and buildings blocked out by request, as with the rest of Germany. Funny you should mention that city in particular!
DeleteAh, you are right, it's by request—so some houses are fuzzed out, others aren't.
DeleteSuccumb to the OverMind! Resistance is useless! Drink the kool-aid and don't make molotov cocktails out of the bottles - that would be naughty.
ReplyDeleteWhy have we outsourced these Street View images to companies? Does the university feature images or videos of its own campus?
ReplyDeleteIt does, naturally, but that's not good enough for Silicon Valley.
DeleteSuch an intervention is barely recognisable (what about AI glasses ?), but what bothers me most is the shrug with which every discussion is dismissed. In China, however – not to mention other state-controlled societies again – even this shrug is noticed.
DeleteJos, I normally don’t respond to comments about China, positive or negative, but this one feels remarkably far-fetched.
DeleteHave you actually been to China? If not, what leads you to conclude that “even this shrug is noticed” there?
What troubles me more is how easily China gets inserted into a discussion that had nothing to do with China in the first place. Have you considered that constant exposure to a particular media narrative can condition people to invoke China almost reflexively as a negative reference point?
Criticism of China is perfectly legitimate. But bringing China into an unrelated, fairly light-hearted discussion about technology and privacy is a reflex worth examining.
Ironically, that itself looks a lot like “succumbing to the Paradigm” — exactly the kind of thing Richard seems to be warning against.
Big Brother at his finest.
ReplyDeleteI live not far from Cornell University in upstate NY. Not long ago, my brother and I visited its arboretum, and in the middle of it, there are a series of unique concrete sculptures constructed by architectural students in the 1960s. (Today they are reminiscent of Angor Wat in Cambodia.) Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take some pictures—and I did. But I didn’t post them on social media because, somewhere, I read that the university reserved the right to approve and control the images of its campus. So I exercised restraint. And the campus is private property—and, while the university does encourage visitors, I felt as if I ought to act as a guest. But what if I had posted an image? Would I have been in legal trouble? I would suppose that the mapping fellow is walking on private property, too. Thanks for a thought-provoking post.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, it's private property. And I imagine that if a random stranger without the blessing of Holy Apple came onto campus and started conspicuously photographing people, there would be some concern.
DeleteYes, it's creepy.
ReplyDelete