Institute For The Future

Politics: Participatory Panopticon

Participatory panopticon is a world in which we record our lives as well as the lives of those around us. Where everything is potentially on the record, often from multiple perspectives; not only is privacy a thing of the past but potentially secrecy as well. Such a world isn’t necessarily intentional; instead, it’s the emergent result of individually reasonable technological and social choices, choices we have made, and are continuing to make today.

The participatory panopticon emerges from the intersection of well-established technological and social trends. An early manifestation of this practice, referred to as “life caching,” relies on still images from handheld or wearable cameras; as bandwidth and storage continue to get cheaper, life caching will inevitable move to video.

Who will the users be? From aging but tech-friendly populations in the United States, Japan, and Europe  to Business, military, and civil service security to young Facebook users.

The tools used for life caching have well-established political use as well. These technologies are celebrated as making it easier to “watch the watchmen”, and call the bottom-up, distributed network of observation tools sousveillance, or “watching from below,” in contrast to surveillance, “watching from above.” In a world where everything we see, say, and do will be recorded, big brother will yield to the kid on the street.

Check out the 2007 Ten-Year Forecast Program perspective Politics: Participatory Panopticon for more information. In the perspective you can read a conversation between IFTF’s own Jamais Cascio and David Brin, a scientist and best-selling author whose future-oriented books include Earth, Startide Rising, and Uplift War. They discus topics such as reciprocal accountability and anonymity on the Internet. The perspective also includes discussions of wearable technology, their use as a health tool, sousveillance and much more.