Evgeni:

Surveillance is not necessarily destined to fail.  By which I mean
that, should AI be possible (Roger Penrose thinks not, but I wonder
he's not missed a trick--but don't have time to get into that here),
then humans don't need to observe--the machines do it.  They can
recognise change, qualify it, and analyze it intelligently...
Surveillance would have succeeded in this case.  (Remember: no one is
right all of the time, so no venture is 'always successful' and
sometimes people get away with things...)

Should this machine-driven AI then function as a human-machine
interface, humans (or machines) would then be able to analyze the
world (perhaps only a certain scale; we might not know what goes on
inside fridges when the lights are off, but we might be able to
see/hear all business in public spaces and/or on comms networks...)...
 For, what would exist would be an enormous database.  So, it's not so
much that you'd need to look for anything specific in advance, but, in
retrospect or maybe also in real time, you would then be able to say
"find me anyone wearing red in Clitheroe right now"--and you would be
able to do that.  In theory...  So: having in advance a red-seeker is
not necessary if ALL data is recorded subsequently to be searched how
and as one wishes (like searching a Shakespeare database for all uses
of the word 'antidisestablishmentarianism'...)...

This does not necessarily get to the juncture of future crime
prevention (we need to find some maidens to swim in milk and have
visions before that can happen)...  But...  Maybe all radioactive
material and/or fertiliser acquisitions might trigger a 'key image'
response (like Blackbriar as a keyword response in Bourne)...

But yes: I agree with you on the thought topic: requires
interpretation and machines that are as 'intelligent' as humans...

[I have always been irked by the phrase Artificial Intelligence.  Can
there really be such a thing?  If a machine was truly intelligent, it
would not be so 'artificially'...  AI, for example, provided, for me,
an artificially intelligent (i.e. not very intelligent at all)
understanding of AI...!]

And agree with you on Lives of Others.  Although we do need to capture
'normal' behaviour to act as a 'control' for when people are not
normally behaved...

[Although this, too, can be manipulated.  Story of First Mate who
turns up drunk for duty one night and Captain writes in the log:
"First Mate drunk tonight."  The next night the First Mate is placed
in charge, but the Captain pays a visit anyway. First Mate writes in
the log: "Captain sober tonight."  Truth is malleable...  And am sure
any surveillance system can be manipulated as can any series of images
[films! - as surveillance - maybe!]...]

Here's my intellectual imposture: if Heisenberg's uncertainly
principle (as far as this weak mind gets it) explains that to observe
a system is to change it, then how does surveillance modify human
behaviour?  Theory is that it makes us all paranoid and/or obedient...

But, to quote Flava Flav, my wandering got my ass wondering (and
forgive how unempirical this musing is):

If a human existed on her own, she might as well not exist.  No one
would see her.  She would see no one.  There would be no interaction,
etc.  After John Donne: no woman is an island.

Humans seem fundamentally to be social beings.  All of our behaviour
(our 'acts') are geared towards making ourselves be seen/look good in
the eyes of others.  Everything that we do is an 'act.'

(As per the joke about the guy who ends up on an island with Cindy
Crawford.  After months of holding out and being repulsed by his
physical form, Cindy finally consents to intercourse.  Satisfied, she
promises to do anything for him.  He makes her cut her hair, paint on
a moustache, walk to the other end of the beach and then walk slowly
towards him.  Bemused, Cindy does as the man wishes.  As she walks
towards him, she suddenly sees him break into a run, screaming and
whooping for joy...  "Mate, mate," he says once he is within earshot.
"Mate, you'll never guess who I slept with last night...!"  -- We need
to have an audience...)

If all human behaviour is regulated by (the possibility of)
observation (surveillance?), and if we modify our behaviour according
to social norms to win mates/partners/friends/clients/favours/etc,
then when exactly are we not observed/observing ourselves?

In other words: is there a moment anyway when we are truly 'ourselves'
and not acting with how we appear in mind?

I wonder if we can set up an action/passion dichotomy: if there is a
moment when we do not act, then we pass.  In passing (dying), we swap
action for passion--we become our 'selves'...  [This is what Donnie
Darko is about for me...]

Like Schrodinger's cat, if we are not observed, we are not.  If
electrons behave differently when observed from when not observed,
then perhaps humans do, too, except that we always act as if we are
observed...

This is partly related to the movies (I still am secretly convinced,
for example, that I am in a movie/try to 'movify' my existence)...
But partly to plain old human interactivity, which is a given of human
behaviour...

Not sure I've explaned that at all well, but I have to go.

Hope it makes some (silly) sense...

w

> Date:    Tue, 4 Sep 2007 11:31:29 -0700
> From:    "Evgeni V. Pavlov" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Surveillance (of interest to few)
>
> William,
>
> many thought-provoking points - but i'll pick up just one that i think
> goes back to my original question: if surveillance is ultimately a kind
> of enterprise that is destined to fail, i wonder why that is? certainly,
> there can be an objective technical aspect, i.e. a kind of surveillance
> that would include all the necesarry data would be too complex to govern
> and use, however, in this case one can work harder and invest more
> resources into new technology. on the other hand, and i wonder what you
> would think of that, surveillance will have failed because it does not
> clearly know what it is that it is after: even if all of one's daily
> movements are captured on camera and one's talks are recorded, what is
> then that would make us know and understand a surveilled subject? if one
> can provisionally distinguish between fact-oriented surveillance that is
> targeting, say, terrorists or any other type of group that plans actions,
> and thought-oriented surveillance that, as in the former USSR, targets
> deviation or subversion, then still we have a problem of interpretation of
> the surveillant data - in case of Lives of Others we have a Stasi operative
> who has to decipher hours and hours of data and determine if anything "bad"
> takes place...
>
> another angle, if you allow me, even in Lives of Others we have a visual
> translation of what Stasi officer only hears, i.e. for the sake of a film,
> his listening is visualised and we see actual scenes that he can only hear -
> and even though he does ocassionally sneek into the apartment and we might
> say he imagines things accurately, imagining and seeing isnt' the same. so
> in this sense, it is not our infantile-narcissistic desire (vis-a-vis Henry M.)
> that requires us to see as if we were omnipresent, it is our awareness of the
> ultimate uselessness of surveillance that makes us enjoy representations of
> omnipresent eye of the camera - i wonder if here this surveillant enjoyment is
> close to, if not the same as, voyerist enjoyment: it is not in the learning
> everything about another person, but about watching another person live his/her
> life (Lives of Others), a kind of a glimpse of ultimately purposeless habitual
> behavior that surveillance allows to collect but before a surveillance person
> or a machine select that which is meaningful.
>
> evgeni
>
> PS. is people-watching a kind of voyerism? is film-watching a kind of surveillance of
> lives of (even if fictional) others?
>

*
*
Film-Philosophy salon
After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to.
To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask]
Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html
For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon.
*
Film-Philosophy journal: http://www.film-philosophy.com
Contact: [log in to unmask]
**