Things I would like hubski's thoughts on: How? Taken in conjunction with the below snippet his statement is really interesting and powerful. Is this inevitable? Is he being dramatic? Might surveillance equally be said to foment rebellion and mistrust of authority?The promise of the Internet has always been that it was gonna be this unprecedentedly potent instrument of liberation and democratization. That it would empower people to band together to work against oppression. That it would let you explore things and meet people who you wouldn’t otherwise get to know in completely free and unconstrained ways. And what has happened instead is that we face the threat that it’s the exact opposite—that instead the Internet could become the most potent and odious tool of human control and oppression in human history.
Surveillance breeds conformity.
I think it's a terrific point, and one that I've been reading about a lot lately, in particular some interaction between sousveillance (the many watching the few) and self-surveillance in the private realm, not necessarily in the context of any dictated authoritarian measures. In particular, the thought that bothers me is (not in all cases of course) that social media and this pseudo-egalitarianism of internet presence puts us in both perspectives: the one doing the sous-veillance (ourselves viewing the celebrities, micro- and otherwise), as well as the self-surveillance that, in conjunction with the idea that nowadays the self and our actions have been commodified, lead to the idea that to have value you have to be worth being sous-veilled(?). This isn't incredibly new, knowing that our morals and behavior and tastes can be co-opted from other sources, but maybe just how ubiquitous it is and easily accessible, added to the idea that we are the same as those we sous-veill (just making up words all over the place) can be a homogenizing factor that we interact with internally and display for those also doing the sous-veilling. Promise I'm not stalking you flagamuffin :) Also, I think that the concept of sous-veillance of the ones doing the surveillance is the idea that is vetted a lot by technologists as the prescription for surveillance, but to be effective it may have to be constant, just like any reputable surveillance system.