Comment by alwa
15 hours ago
So—speaking to the general “you” here—not you, @jiggawatts, personally (I’m sure we’re both lovely, and I chose to respond here only because you seem to capture the prevailing opinion simply, thoughtfully, and reasonably)—
I respect that you believe that. I do not. It touches up against my basic relationship to reality and existence. To me, there’s a difference between a person and a machine. And between a meeting-of-the-minds-in-the-moment and an archival record.
To me, even the act of processing me through something-other-than-your-human-mind feels violative—essentializing and reductive. For me it’s wrapped up in ideas about attachment, and illusions of permanence, and attention and presence and the extra ineffable elements of human contact that unfold at levels other than the words and an exchange being about much more than the “information content.”
You don’t have to agree with me, but it’s frustrating for my conversation partner to take what I bring to a conversation while demanding to also take more than I’m willing to offer.
You’re free to allow people to record you, or analyze you, or machine-summarize you, or livestream you for the judgment and entertainment of the internet-dwelling masses, or whatever you’d like.
And I’m free to say: do not record me. Ever. Even on a rolling buffer, even “just for note-taking.” Even if it “only lives” some specific digital place. Unless I specifically say it’s OK, ahead of time; and we agree on how specifically the processed-me-byproduct will be used.
I’m not unreasonable! Sometimes the answer is yes! Is it for accessibility? Of course, go for it! Thank you for asking. Do we want to make a statement for the record? Great! But ask.
Funnily enough the “soul sucked out” trope occurred to me too, but it seems like we take different lessons from it. For me, it cues stories about a bunch of economically powerful people inserting themselves into places and situations where other people lived. Using their new camera technology to exploit those people’s images and likenesses, and justifying it by rolling their eyes together at how superstitious and backward and dumb those people were for not liking it. As if it were impossible for somebody to understand the thing and still not want it used on them.
And thus figuring their superiority gave them permission to “educate” the people whose likenesses they sought to exploit. And if the subjects still didn’t like it, it must be their shortcoming (since all right-thinking people obviously agree about matters of the soul and of cameras).
So it was OK to disregard their subjects’ beliefs, and their subjects’ dignity. The camera-pushers were entitled, by dint of their superior certainty, to treat people like specimens.
I agree there’s a parallel, but I think the people who were in the wrong were the people forcing the cameras on people who didn’t want to be involved.
[ETA, for @cindyllm: Your provocations are sublime, and I'm grateful that you continue to confound those of us who walk with the dead. You keep me off balance like nobody else. Is that your LinkedIn, or would I be spamming a random Canadian person?]
I get it, and I don't.
By that I mean that I really do understand your position, but I also deeply understand the flawed logic that created that attitude in you. I can't agree with it, because I see the inconsistency, I recognise the motivation, and I know that it is fundamentally about something else entirely.
The angry soccer mom shouting at the dad with the DSLR camera isn't angry about her kid's picture getting taken.
She's scared of the pedophiles and her children's innocence being violated by forces beyond her control. The big camera is a symbol to fight against, something out-of-place and even vulgar in its nature.
That same person won't even notice the half a dozen phones people pull out to take pictures of her kid at the game. Won't bat an eye. No complaints. That's normal, that's fine, that's just for social media!
This watch thing is just an accessibility feature. That's all it is. Nothing more. Trust me: NOBODY will ever use it to spy on you, or snoop on you, or furtively check past conversations they had with you. Ever. It... just won't happen. That's not a thing, will never be a thing, and is in no shape, way, or form harmful to your organic human conversations, or whatever.
You're upset about something else. I don't know what it is specifically, but if I dare guess, it's something like the Flock cameras. The surveillance state. Meta and Google hoovering up everyone's personal data by the exabyte, and weaponising it against them. Our children's innocence ruined by algorithms tuned to addict them. "Smart" televisions taking screenshots and even sending audio recordings to foreign data centres. Car navigation camera images uploaded for AI training, or who knows what else. On and on, and on!
I get it, I do.
We're losing our privacy. We're increasingly monitored and controlled.
We live in a world that George Orwell could not have imagined in his worst nightmares.
We have files on us so detailed that it would make a KGB spook blush.
Unless you live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, you've already bathed in a sea of cameras and microphones, many of which are always on in some sense or another.
Apple Watch isn't the problem here. It already had a microphone, in every edition, going back to the first one. It could already "surreptitiously" record you!
What Apple's engineers have done is add an accessibility feature for the old and hard of hearing in the most secure and privacy-preserving way imaginable.
You're getting worked up about it to a level that makes no logical sense whatsoever because you're not upset about it, you're not upset about the specifics of its privacy, you're upset about... <waves hands>... everything.
I get it.
[dead]