thanks william - too many excellent points, will have to responde later but
reading your description of human interaction, i wonder if it's an old
philosophical puzzle, this time changed for the situation:
does a person tripping over a root in the woods really trips over a root,
if there's no one there to watch her (and laugh, i guess)
e.
--- William Brown <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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?
> >
>
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