I’ve made a note a few days ago about an article I stumbled upon, which is called “Should we do away with privacy?”, so I decided to finally post about it. Its main idea is that the surveillance society reached a point in which, in order to be free, the individual should embrace his surveilled persona.
The basic line is stop fighting the process of giving up your privacy and start using in your favor the results of you being watched and transformed in data.
This idea is very interesting. I am currently writing a paper about how literature anticipated the emergence of the surveillance society and I’ve been reading a lot about this topic. I strongly feel that there is no way of putting an end to the surveillance society, no way of tempering it and it occurred to me that, possibly, the emergence of the surveillance society is as natural as the evolution of humankind.
Cindy Gallop’s idea is that “If you identify exactly who you are and what you stand for, what you believe in, what you value, and if you then only ever behave, act and communicate in a way that is true to you, then you never have to worry about where anybody comes across you or what you’re found doing.”
Now, this is something to think about. As far as the social reality goes, this statement cannot be countered. As far as the philosophy of human rights goes, it is obvious that such an attitude would be exactly what Bentham was looking for in his Panopticon theory: correct behaviors due to permanent surveillance. The discussion can be endless, and it doesn’t suit a blog. Therefore, I invite you to read the article and make your own opinion about it:
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