Reminding Myself: Panopticon
Out of curiosity, would anyone be interested in a longer, in depth exploration of the “democratized panopticon” concept I haphazardly mentioned in my last post?
In this case, interested means “I’m going to do it no matter what, but would appreciate people to bounce ideas off of / discuss with, outside of my standard (and beloved and trusted) usual circle”.
Current thought is to start with the initial Panopticon concept, and then talk about technology reshaping it, how society has adapted, a few specific examples, and what it means for key elements of present (and future) human identity and interaction.
I needed a new project anyway.
Deliberate Accountability: an idea.
Imagine a brand had an online help desk. Not just a phone number, or an email address, but an actual online help desk, where you could see the person who was about to help you, on skype-esque streaming video.
You click through, and are assigned to a person who can see you, a person you can see. You are having a genuine, real time, one on one interaction with a person who has publicly, and individually pledged to help you.
This would be expensive. It would be complex. You’d need to empower your staff to make replacement and repair decisions, in person, without a flowchart. You’d run the risk of a screengrab every time an employee absentmindedly picked their nose, and a YouTube video every time they misrepresented the brand.
It would be completely worth it.
Because you already risk the bad press with every potential interaction. Because we live in a democratized panopticon: we are all (potentially) on video, all of the time.
Because he next phase of the Internet is about accountability. Not the ‘gotcha’ accountability enforced by wikileaks.org. The kind of accountability that comes with using your real name as a twitter handle, linking your LinkedIn profile with your Facebook page. The accountability that comes with WANTING to be googled.
The brands that get ahead of the accountability curve, and stop using potential risk as an excuse to avoid awesomeness, will develop a trust that is generally reserved for people.
Because embracing that accountability is about blowing up a company: from a whole to a collective of individual parts moving with unified purpose.
Show us your face, or we’ll assume you have something to hide.
Reputation Is Dead: It’s Time To Overlook Our Indiscretions
“We’re primed and ready now and have lots of experience publishing all those random opinions about people and things on Twitter, Yelp and Facebook already. It’s time for a centralized, well organized place for anonymous mass defamation on the Internet. Scary? Yes. But it’s coming nonetheless.
This has been on my mind for a long while now. Our minds haven’t evolved much over the last few thousands of years, but the spread of quick fire opinions is now moving at the speed of light and forever findable on the Internet. We’re still wired to think of gossip as something that spreads quietly behind the scenes, and relatively slowly. But we’re already in a world where it’s all completely public, there are few repercussions to the person spreading it, and it is easily searchable. No wonder people freak out. We’re fish out of water.
Sure, we’ve evolved a legal infrastructure to deal with libel, slander and defamation. Those laws worked well in an era of the printing press, and sort of stretched to cover radio and television. But they are as ineffective against the Internet as copyright laws are in battling music piracy.” -Michael Arrington (via Marc D Schiller)
See also: Facebook May Share User Data With External Sites Automatically
This has come up a lot lately, and I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s coming quicker than any of us think - so much of our social contract is possible only without the burden of documentation, we can only ignore the failings of humans when not constantly confronted with evidence.
We’re entering an age where the market on shame will be flooded, and the social value of shame will plummet as a consequence. But right now, the initial reaction will be an attempt to inflate the value and costs of shame, as an attempt to (over) correct what will be interpreted as a conflict between our values and our reality.
Reality will win. A lot of (social) lives will be casualties of a long, and doubtless brutal battle.
Reputation isn’t dead, it’s dying (more accurately, changing). And the death throes will do a considerable amount of damage.
