Sousveillance as well as inverse surveillance are terms coined by Steve Mann to describe the recording of an activity from the perspective of a participant in the activity, typically by way of small portable or wearable recording devices that often stream continuous live video to the Internet. Steve provided us with a means to reverse the panopticon. Instead of one eye watching over the masses, we now have a vigilant collective armed with cameraphones aimed straight at the tower.

the internet as a model for the panopticon

The American prison systems of the late 18th and 19th centuries utilized the notion of the Panopticon - Jeremy Bentham's design that allowed all prisoners to see each other (pan, all; optic, see/observe) and therefore reduce the duty and necessity of prison guards. -critical theory forum.

Every corporate internet company today is obsessed with cataloging your each and every click and post to the web. we let websites choose music for us, track our everyday lives with twitter and facebook, and tag us with mass amounts of cookies. It seems as if everyone is out to create their own social mollification index.

who's watching the watcher?

feedback_loop, originally uploaded by smob.upload.

how do we complete this feedback loop?

The Watchful Eye of God: an incomplete feedback loop

SacredAllegory, originally uploaded by smob.upload.

surveillance | to observe from above
sousveillance | to observe from below
inverse surveillance

God's Eye as Surveillance

TheAllSeer_godsEyeAsProtoSurveillance, originally uploaded by smob.upload.

18th c. - vision became widely favored by the various strains of Enlightenment and was pronounced the predominant paradigm of cognition.

Eye as the mediator between interior and exterior subject and world.

Guarantees critical access to reality.

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post photos, music, videos, and streams of "targets"