Third Generation Computing and Project Proposal

'...in third generation computing, technologies of surveillance are invisible and pervasive – nowhere and yet everywhere – reconfiguring the dynamic between seer and seen; one is ‘watched’ all the time, yet by no one and from nowhere is particular.'

Source: http://wi.hexagram.ca/1_1_html/1_1_pdf/wi.1.1.andrea.zeffiro.pdf

This has got me thinking about a form to the project:

Begin by taking one subject and exploring the various ways technology is ingrained and codified into this persons life, and exploring each avenue, almost turning this persons life into an interface in which for the user to explore, a wheel like a panoptican, where instead of having the guard in the middle with the subjects unaware, have the subject in the middle with the various ways this person's life if codified and projected through dataveillance and self-surveillance technologies.

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Looking at all the different technologies and the how these in a sense control this fictional character, how they survey him, and in various ways interact with his everyday life.

Visually, almost like a circle, with the avatar in the middle (the fictional character), and the various nodes, and codified technologies that interact with that avatar placed in circle surrounding him. The user can click on each node or section to show and illustrate how these different technologies control, survey this character through consumption of technologies. 

I have this image of a humanoid interface ('a meshing of the human and the machine')

1. For example one node may lead to a timeline of this characters location using a GPS signal, of course this is fictional - but with all these technologies I have been finding it is definitely a possibility: 'Phones equipped with Global Positional System (GPS) software enable the collection of personal information whereby data about the user becomes an object of exchange. The ‘phoneur’ leaves traces in the virtual world as he/she enters and manoeuvres in spaces that are systematically codified into data'.
2. One may lead to a fractured and elusive flash video of all the various statuses, revealing in various ways how this user projects himself on the internet... creating a narrative of his/her day through images, text, videos and so on:  'Uploads and downloads symbolically construct the individual simultaneously as consumer and producer and as part of the audience in the postmodern age in which boundaries between categories are blurred and increasingly eroded.'
3. A contacts tab, where the user can search among a group of other avatars, to see what his friends are doing (like a social network site) - and a link to a GPS signal, or where they are located on a map: [showing how both the subject and other users private information become objects of exchange in this system]
4. Access to a digitalized diary
5. The various photos, images and text the user has uploaded in the day, showing a particular narrative

The body becomes codified and in-grained into these technologies, the way we live our everyday lives are dependent on these technologies. However these are beyond a totalitarian state monitoring from above but rather we consent to these technologies and take part in a participatory culture.

The point of turning a human into an interface with various nodes is to illustrate the various ways we depend on these technologies, how they are in-grained into our lives and has led a 'control society' where we can simultaneously be controlled at the same time through different methods, but also how they invite through our consumption of different technological devices (such as Locative Media) the collapsing of the public/private and the move towards a participatory surveillance.


These are some of the possible nodes --- but there is potential for many more.

Here is a rough visualization of what it could look like:

Also in regard to the consumption of new forms embedded with gps and locative tech:

'The phoneur is thus embedded in a network data structure which produces social relations based on commodity production and consumption. Manuel Castells refers to this as the ‘space of flows’, in which capitalist production and consumption are submitted to panoptic surveillance of activities within the wired and wireless networks...thus creating new geographies of surveillance which incorporate the wired body within this landscape.'


Source: http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/03-ibrahim.php