Liberating Voices! A Pattern Language for Communication Revolution
Sousveillance
Douglas Schuler
Public Sphere Project (CPSR)
douglas at scn dot org
"One of the fundamental contrasts between free democratic societies and totalitarian systems is that the totalitarian government [or other totalitarian organization] relies on secrecy for the regime but high surveillance and disclosure for all other groups, whereas in the civic culture of liberal democracy, the position is approximately the reverse." -- Professor Geoffrey de Q Walker, now dean of law at Queensland University in Australia.
Context: In any political / social context, from a liberal democracy to an authoritarian government. Sousveillance in a democratiic (or quasi-democratic) country is particularly important in times of overzealous governmental secrecy and propensity towards surveillance.
Discussion. "Steve Mann presents the notion of sousveillance as a method for the public to monitor the establishment and provide a new level of transparency. This has been the role of the press, but with its strong orientation toward positive feedback, the media has tended to focus on less relevant issues, which get an inordinate amount of attention. One such example was the media's fascination with Gennifer Flowers and her claim that she had had an affair with President Clinton." -- From Joichi Ito's discussion of Emergent Democracy.
One of the first thing that George W. Bush did when he became president of the US was to place his father's writings (which by law were supposed to be made public) into secrecy.
This patten (like many others) is stil incomplete. There are many interesting and instructive examples of this pattern in action.
Note: the introductory graphic (above) was used to coordinate protest rallies in London against the US invasion of Iraq. It is from the Chasing Bush web site.Therefore:
People must have the means to watch the watchers. Steve Mann's term "sousveillance" captures this idea.
Categories: Orientation, Engagement, Social learning and intelligence
Themes: Theory, Social Movement, Education, Community Action, Policy
Pattern System
Public Sphere Project
Pattern Language ProjectThu Sep 2 07:28:21 2010 douglas@scn.org