{"id":22474,"date":"2017-03-21T10:42:24","date_gmt":"2017-03-21T14:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/?p=22474"},"modified":"2017-03-21T11:56:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-21T15:56:22","slug":"we-need-to-tell-better-stories-about-our-surveilled-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/cyborgology\/2017\/03\/21\/we-need-to-tell-better-stories-about-our-surveilled-future\/","title":{"rendered":"We Need to Tell Better Stories About Our Surveilled Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cWe need to tell more diverse and realistic stories about AI,\u201d Sara Watson <\/span>writes<\/span><\/a>, \u201cif we want to understand how these technologies fit into our society today, and in the future.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Watson\u2019s point that popular narratives inform our understandings of and responses to AI feels timely and timeless. As the same handful of AI narratives circulate, repeating themselves like a befuddled Siri, their utopian and dystopian plots prejudice seemingly every discussion about AI. And like the Terminator itself, these paranoid, fatalistic stories now feel inevitable and unstoppable. As Watson warns, \u201cIf we continue to rely on these sci-fi extremes, we miss the realities of the current state of AI, and distract our attention from real and present concerns.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Watson\u2019s criticism is focused on AI narratives, but the argument lends itself to society\u2019s narratives about other contemporary worries, from global warming to selfies and surveillance. On surveillance, <\/span>Zeynep Tufek\u00e7i<\/span><\/a> made a similar point in 2014 about our continued reliance on outdated Orwellian analogies (hi <\/span>1984<\/span><\/i>) and panoptic metaphors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Resistance and surveillance: The design of today\u2019s digital tools makes the two inseparable. And how to think about this is a real challenge. It\u2019s said that generals always fight the last war. If so, we\u2019re like those generals. Our understanding of the dangers of surveillance is filtered by our thinking about previous threats to our freedoms. But today\u2019s war is different. We\u2019re in a new kind of environment, one that requires a new kind of understanding. […]<\/span><\/p>\n

To make sense of the surveillance states that we live in, we need to do better than allegories [1984] and thought experiments [the Panopticon], especially those that derive from a very different system of control. We need to consider how the power of surveillance is being imagined and used, right now, by governments and corporations.<\/span><\/p>\n

We need to update our nightmares.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I want to return to Tufek\u00e7i\u2019s argument as it relates specifically to surveillance a little later, but just considering the top Google definition of \u201c<\/span>surveillance<\/span><\/a>\u201d affirms Tufek\u00e7i\u2019s point that our ideas of what surveillance looks and acts like (e.g. cameras mounted on buildings, human guards watching from towers, phone mouthpieces surreptitiously bugged, etc.) have not changed much since both the fictional and real 1984.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stepping back from surveillance in particular and to look at narratives more generally, two recent books \u2013 <\/span>Discognition<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Steven Shaviro and <\/span>Four Futures: Life After Capitalism<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Peter Frase \u2013 speak to speculative fiction\u2019s utility for imagining the present and its relation to possible futures. Shaviro puts it simply when he <\/span>describes<\/span><\/a> science fiction as storytelling that \u201cguesses at a future without any calculation of probabilities, and therefore with no guarantees of getting it right.\u201d Throughout <\/span>Discognition<\/span><\/i>, Shaviro uses a variety of speculative fiction stories as lenses to think about sentience, human and otherwise; incidentally a few of these exemplify the kind of complex AI narratives Watson calls for.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the foreword to <\/span>Four Futures<\/span><\/i>, Peter Frase echoes Shaviro when stating his preference for speculative fiction \u201cto those works of \u2018futurism\u2019 that attempt to directly predict the future, obscuring its inherent uncertainty and contingency [\u2026]\u201d Frase’s approach, \u201ca type of \u2018social science fiction,\u2019\u201d shares with Shaviro\u2019s an appreciation of narrative\u2019s speculative capacities, or speculative fiction\u2019s suitability to narrative.<\/span><\/p>\n

Both of these works, it should be noted, owe credit to the work of scholars like Donna Haraway. As Haraway surmised in one of the most precient lines of <\/span>A Cyborg Manifesto<\/span><\/i> (published in 1984 no less), \u201cThe boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion.\u201d Considering the many possible narratives and approaches speculative fiction affords, the disenchantment Watson and Tufe\u00e7ki express with their fields\u2019 respective narratives feels even more appropriate. Indeed, It is a little dispiriting to imagine the promise and possibility evoked in Haraway\u2019s manifesto could \u2013 through narrative repetition \u2013 come to feel banal.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naming culprits for surveillance fiction fatigue would be too easy, though shoutout to <\/span>Black Mirror<\/span><\/i> for epitomizing this general malaise. A more prominent and useful target of critique would be the various, often well intentioned, surveillance-conscious media we consume. A short list of recent radio\/podcast programs that cover the topic include:<\/span><\/p>\n