Everyone’s favourite protest artist, Banksy, takes a serious look at surveillance in his work. Most of the images below are his.
I remember reading and hearing about the level of surveillance in London for some time[1], but only when I visited the city last year did I fully appreciate just how extensive the network of cameras in the city centre is.

To tell the truth I wasn’t reelly surprised by the pervasiveness of these devices in London; sobered, yes – but not surprised[2].
Government surveilence isn’t new and systems like Carnivore and Echelon now come close to rivalling the Wal-Mart data warehouse(ha ha).
The cameras deployed throughout zones 1 and 2 might be a concern from a privacy point of view, but they’re not the real looming danger.

As always, Banksy sees the reality.

Banksy – Monolith

Everything2 says that a surveillance culture is ‘a cultural climate featuring the normalization of constant surveillance by agencies public and/or private’.
It’s a good definition and identifies the major players in this present/future drama, but it’s not so much the ‘constant surveillance’ or the ‘agencies’ that is of interest, it’s the ‘normalization’.

Banksy – What are you looking at?

The normalisation of being recorded.

Here’s my prediction; in the coming years we’ll see the rise of a surveillance culture that is held to be normal and positive and is driven by consumers (not agencies). This culture will take its place alongside celebrity, lifestyle, millenial, globalisation and genX cultures as defining a generation and a time when it became normal to be recorded.

Banksy – Surveillance Pirates

The coming surveillance culture will be sold to the public in the same way that lifestyle culture has been sold; by framing it as a positive action that each of us takes toward improving our quality of life.
Never mind fighting international terrorism – wouldn’t you want the peace of mind of knowing where your children are?

Childcare centers across the nation hear “thank you” everyday from Moms and Dads who take advantage of the value and convenience of KinderCam.

KinderCam is the industry leader in childcare viewing systems, and our state-of-the-art camera systems allows parents an effective way to see their child from home or work.

Kindercam

AT LEAST YOU KNOW WHERE THEY ARE
When children are playing, they are not always paying attention to the time, where they are or the dangers around them. As a parent you are not always in a position to keep a close eye on your child and where they may be playing. This can leave parents with a feeling of unease and discomfort.

Children need to have a sense of independency and trust from their parents in order to grow into responsible individuals. By taking advantage of the GPS technology within i-Kids, parents can now keep a close eye on their children.

i-Kids

Surveillance culture is not something that will be forced on us by Patriot act wielding suits or riot gear wearing grunts – we’ll build this Panopticon ourselves with cute and colourful devices that let us watch our homes, cars, family, pets and plants.

But this horror futurescape doesn’t upset me[3] because it is nothing more than humanity’s next babel – religious fanaticism, facism, consumerism – for eons we’ve been building our own cages in a romanticised image of our beautiful world.
This doesn’t bother me – it’s a natural reality.
There are other things related to privacy that really scare me – but we’ll get there.

Banksy – England Pastoral

[1] The last statistic I heard is that the average London tourist is photographed in the region of 300 times a day.
[2] At some point I’ll slap down some wurds on my take on information gathering vs. privacy.
[3] As much as some other things do

Update: here’s a another one – Spot.