The (real) Terms and Conditions of Surveillance
Surveillance and tracking are common topics surrounding managing COVID-19. In this week’s Ma-kin sense chat, we poked around the term surveillance and the mixed feelings of what it means to us and used a speculative design approach to design an advert that focuses on imagining a future scenario of a tracking app and the terms and conditions for the app.
For those new to Speculative Design it is a design approach that can be used to explore social, political, technological, and ethical issues and to help generate new ideas and solutions. Speculative design is not about predicting the future but about exploring different ways that the future could be. By doing so, it can help us to understand the present better and make better decisions about the future.
Terms and Conditions of Vigilante
We will endeavour to keep you safe.
There will be a compromise of the benefits and consequences.
There may be just the perception that we are tracking.
The experience of being watched has the power to control how you behave.
It is likely you will forget you are being tracked.
Those absent are invisible, but their absence is being watched.
What we see may not be the reality.
You will be doing your bit for society.
You will become more predictable to us.
You may feel an invasion of privacy.
We might track stuff you do not know but will be unnoticed.
Did you want to read the small print or remain passive anyway?
You can try to allow me to see what you want me to see.
Your data may be used against you and consequently labelled or vilified.
Trust in trust.
An anonymous body will track you.
Potentially anyone can watch.
The surveying itself has the power, not us.
You’re doing the collectively recognized thing.
Your surveillance will be taken as truth even though it might show interpretation.
We are all safer knowing we are all safe.
A (real) terms and conditions summary inspired from Ma-kin sense conversation on the word "Surveillance". The group of reflectors: Laura Cloke, Ann Marie Newton, Laurie Atkins, Hannah Alexander-Wright and Katherine Simpson.What are ‘ma-kin sense’ articles?
Purpose
• Discuss as a group for 27 mins to reflect on a keyword that is prevalent or emerging in society. The conversation is written up as an article with doodles and notes accompanied.
Format
• Each person shares their observations on the key word and riff off each other.
So what
• The conversation is for self-reflection and collective transfer of knowledge – nothing more, nothing less.
• It is an opportunity to be in the moment, experimental and experiential to poke and prod as a collection of voices to excavate and test the edges of our boundaries.