Here's an idea.
We can learn a lot about surveillance culture
from a meteorite?
As it turns out, Chicken Little might have been onto something.
This sky is in fact falling-- in Russia at least.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
On February 15, 2013, a 55-meter diameter,
10,000-ton meteorite broke through the atmosphere over
Chelyabinsk, Russia and caused a blast which leveled buildings,
broke windows, and injured 1,000 people.
Astrophysicist extraordinaire and snazzy dresser Neil
deGrasse Tyson had some awesome insight into this,
saying that it's something that could happen every 10 years.
Heck, it could happen every year for all that we know.
Most of the Earth is covered in water where there any cameras
so we can't see what's going on.
Which actually brings up an interesting point.
There were a lot of videos of this meteorite--
like a lot, a lot.
And why were there so many videos?
Because of car accidents.
Well, sort of.
Because of Russian law.
Well, OK, let's back up a second.
You see, in mother Russia, car drives you.
I'm sorry.
I just, I feel like I had to.
OK.
So really though, Russian roads have
a reputation for being more than a little dangerous.
Cultural norms about speed, driving etiquette, and traffic
laws have led to the development of a driving culture which
is, shall we say, adventurous.
There are a lot of accidents.
And add to that corrupt police officers and even corrupt
insurance companies.
And that is where the cameras come in.
Many Russian drivers have dash cams
installed so that whenever anything insane or fishy
happens they have video proof of the shenanigans-- shenaniproof.
But as it turns out, if you give the world's largest country
with the craziest driving style, the largest distribution
of mobile cameras, turn them into some kind
of crazy four-wheeled camera swarm,
you're going to see some weird stuff.
And that is just science.
It's science.
Crazy car accidents, lots of near misses,
fistfights, cows, horses, logs, and, yes, the collision
of a space rock with the Earth's atmosphere.
Because of the size and location of the meteorite,
this is arguably the first time such a huge number
of normally Grindhouse style scene capturing cameras
all see the same event.
The upshot being that thanks to Russia's one million dash cams,
the world can experience this awesome event from every angle.
Hm?
What's that?
Oh, a million?
Yeah.
No, that's not an exaggeration.
A million.
And it's not just Russia either.
Dash cams are in plenty of places
where the roads resemble a game of "Mario Cart."
In these places, there is a kind of widespread citizen
surveillance culture.
Now, normally when we think of surveillance
we think of guys in dark suits in a van that reads Flowers
by Irene, and traffic cameras, and license plate readers,
and London's hugely controversial CCTV
expansion and unmanned drones, not
to mention huge scale data mining and all that other fun
stuff.
But we're going to stick to lenses for now.
Up until pretty recently, surveillance
was almost exclusively something that
happened to you, enacted by Big Brother as a kind of control
or intimidation.
But now surveillance is dash cams,
and iPhones, and GoPros, on cars, at political events,
and in situations where legality is fluid.
Stop recording me.
We went from Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, a structure where
a central authority could view all
of the residents of a building without being seen,
to a kind of pan-panopticon, people watching people
watching people.
Now, I'm not going to suggest that we should
fear a future where cameras are everywhere and nothing we do
is private.
Though, maybe we should.
I'm just saying that as active recording has become a larger
part of our culture, like taking pictures and making movies,
so has passive recording.
And while watching this giant piece of rock
explode in the sky over Russia from every angle,
it's hard to not feel some kind of connectedness.
Here we are in these cars with these people on their way
to work, experiencing this amazing event.
But the spirit of that connectedness,
that unity through a series or collection of images
isn't just amazing footage of this event, is it?
It's also privacy, and the police, and car accidents,
and the growing footprint of technology,
and a constantly increasing number of lenses.
I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing,
just that it is definitely a thing.
What do you guys think of a world
where there are cameras everywhere?
And are we in it right now?
Let us know in the comments.
And if you're in Russia, don't worry about it
because we subscribe you.
I'm very sorry.
I'm really disappointed we didn't get any comments
by messenger pigeon.
Lets see what you guys had to say about online and offline.
First of all, welcome to the Hoggtowne AVClub.
Glad to have you.
They say that we need to not make a distinction between what
is online and offline but rather what
is internet and not internet.
Things which are not internet-- public toilets, naval oranges,
Congress, and I'm sure many other things.
TheRock647 says that metaphorical language isn't
necessarily going to stop us from understanding something
because it's a thing that we use in language all the time,
describing like fighting off diseases
or defending your points, and that it's not really
going to change our relationship to the internet.
I think it's a little bit of a chicken and the egg,
though, because the way that we build the internet and the way
that we talk about it are so closely related that if we were
to use completely different words,
like instead of surf you used fly,
like would that change the way that you think about what
you do on the internet?
I don't-- I don't know.
Maybe?
IrishKyle21 makes the very astute observation
that the online/offline distinction is one
that you can only really consider
if you are in a socioeconomic position to consider it.
Well received.
Vilnis Krumins makes a comparison
between online/offline and being a member of a community.
And this is-- this is a great comment so we'll just
pause here so you can read it.
Brett Carrol makes the case that people definitely
behave differently online from the way that they do offline
and gives 4chan as an example.
When talking about this phenomena, a lot of people
act like a person will have like two completely different
personalities, like they're two different people.
They behave one way online and a completely different way
offline.
When really it's kind of more like the way
that you behave at your grandmother's
house versus the way that you behave at the strip club.
Like you're the same person, there's
just situational differences that determine the way
that you behave.
To P Bradley Robb, this is a pain
I know well because I am old.