terça-feira, 10 de julho de 2007

Vigilância participativa??

Intervenção de Eric Gordon na Lista do iDC [Institute for Distributed Creativity] discute o quanto o uso de ferramentas participativas e de tecnologoias "web 2.0" em comunidades e redes sociais geograficamente conectadas, bem como no governo de cidades, pode gerar dados valiosos que sirvam à vigilância.
Reproduzo a intervenção na íntegra e indico link com respostas de Lucas Bambozzi e Sergio Tisselli (http://www.zexe.net) à provocação de Gordon.

[iDC] city as social network

ERICK GORDON
"Hi everyone.  My name is Eric Gordon – I’ve been watching this list 
for some time but I’ve made only a few contributions. Perhaps as a
means of forcing my involvement, Trebor has asked me to moderate a
discussion on the topic that has lately occupied most of my time –
place-based social media and its implications for privacy, public
space, and democratic engagement. Following the recent conversation
about Feedburner, I want to consider how that discussion might extend
to physical communities (neighborhood, organization, city) that are
enabled/bolstered/fortified by social web media. Many community
groups and neighborhood organizations are using digital networking
technologies to foster community interaction (http://
www.ibrattleboro.com/). And of course, what is widely known as
citizen journalism plays into this as well – placebloggers (http://
placebloggers.com) and Community Media organizations tend towards
hyperlocal networked content (http://www.cctvcambridge.org/) with an
aim towards reinforcing existing geographical connections. The
processes that bind non-geographical communities in networks are
similar to those that are binding geographical communities – shared
interests, practices, goals, etc. However, unlike traditional
online communities that have a basis in anonymity, digitally
annotated physical communities often rely on the full disclosure of
identity for their functionality. For instance, when it comes to
neighborhood issues – it is important to know one’s real name and
location.

And as city governments are seeking ways to adopt “web 2.0”
technologies into their existing “citizen management” projects, the
lack of anonymity and the simple traceability of social actions open
up new concerns. Social media tools have the capacity to
significantly expand participation in local governance, but they also
have the capacity to trace citizen behavior and map social trends.
Cities are interested in this technology for the same reason that
corporations are – it offers valuable user data. Politicians can
survey the concerns of their constituency; agencies can identify
problems in neighborhoods; and law enforcement…well, there are many
scenarios possible. It can also be turned around: citizens can have
greater access to their politicians, and government proceedings can
at least have the impression of transparency.

While the conversations on this list have devoted considerable time
to corporate surveillance, the question not often asked in this
context is what should be made of local surveillance – from the
people in one’s neighborhood to city governments? In the wake of
connectivity, discourse and collaboration, there is always
documentation, processing and interpretation. From neighborhood
chatrooms to local annotated mapping projects to virtual town hall
meetings, participation equals surveillance – for better or for worse.

When I consider a digital future in which I want to live – it
includes networked access to my neighborhood services, communities,
city government and public spaces. However, there is little
possibility for that to take place outside of the proliferation of
data that would make communities vulnerable to excessive internal and
external management. And as citywide wifi and mobile web devices
proliferate, the outlets for that recycled data expand. At the same
time, American cities, like corporations, are glomming onto digital
media because of its populist resonances. They are paying attention
to online neighborhoods and seeking to aggregate that data into
meaningful information. The ideology of digital media – as evidenced
in the phrases “participatory media” and “user-generated content” –
is accessibility. Digital media directly aligns the rhetoric of
progress with the rhetoric of populism. Social web media makes
explicit what has only been implied in the recent rhetoric of city
governments – that anyone, regardless of social position, can
participate in the ordering of city experience and politics.

From cities to towns to neighborhoods, the populist promise of
social web media is transforming the nature of public space and civic
participation. I am referring only to the American context, because
that’s what I know, but it would be great to engage in comparative
dialogue in order to better understand the scope of how these
technologies are being implemented in official or unofficial
capacities to change perceptions of cities and city life, not to
mention public space and community engagement.

I suppose I’ll leave it at that for now. I look forward to the
conversation.

Eric"

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