A bit of philosophy in this post. Sometimes it helps to step back and look at the whole picture.
The amazing power of a story is how it creates images so striking that people see life through that lens. Many will even see it that way when it isn’t true. George Orwell created such a vivid picture with his book, 1984. So, today, we find people seeing Big Brother, or the fears of Big Brother, all the time.
However, there is a much bigger trend going on today that never gets mentioned: Little Brother.
Look at all the cases where people carrying cell phone cameras or camcorders have caught government officials or politicians crossing the line.
Which is the more powerful change taking place? It is clearly Little Brother.
Why is that? Because, as surprising as it might seem, technology empowers the little guy more than it does government or big corporations. It gives more power to the individual.
Back in the wild west days of America, they called Sam Colt the Great Equalizer, because the revolver by that name could take the big land tycoon and make him very equal to a single person. The invention of the gun equalized the power of established authorities.
This is exactly why democracy has grown hand in hand with technology. And this is also why we see the rise of terrorism in the world.
Terrorists can only exist when there is technology that can put the power of widespread destruction in the hands of a few. This is proof that Little Brother is the big force to be faced in the future. But all we ever hear about is Big Brother.
I hate to say it but Big Brother is more like the endangered species. It is getting harder and harder to find kings these days.
But all of this just shows the gap in perception that can come from these lenses created by a culture.
Take the article that just ran in the Boston Globe about Intelligent Surveillance:
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/02/08/surveillance_gets_intelligent/
It talks about using video analytics for intelligent detection and Remote Guarding.
But what is just as interesting are the responses. Read them below the article. Or you can see them on this page:
http://people.boston.com/articles/abusiness/?p=articlecomments&activityId=5896397118473455799
Big Brother shows up in the first post we see. The second person sees security professionals as a protection racket. These are lenses that come from the images presented in the media and in movies.
Later on a few professional security people added their comments. They see this new technology as a big benefit:
“This technology is needed. Unmonitored cameras have been proven to NOT deter crime. This company is actively watching cameras and making it known by speaking from them. This is real security vs. false.”
Spot-on!
exChiefofPolice said: “In an ideal situation I too would like to see more “boots on the ground”. Unfortunately, that is not realistic economically.”
What’s even more interesting, but I’ve never heard anyone mention this before, is the way that video analytics will actually reduce the problem of people watching things they shouldn’t. We know that there are cases of people monitoring who pan the cameras to follow an attractive face, and we all know that this is exactly the opposite of what we want such equipment to be used for.
But analytics eliminates the need to be panning and looking for a problem. In fact, those who try to use video that way just about go nuts trying to watch and look for something that isn’t happening. The human brain wasn’t built for that. No wonder they try to find anything of interest to keep looking at the most boring video you can imagine. What people do very well, however, is respond when something happens. Assess the situation and knowing what to do.
So, you set up the rules for what you want to be notified about, and that allows people to review exactly those situations and respond. This makes it easy to define what people are watching.
This means that it will be easier to regulate and control how and where video is used, while at the same time providing much better security protection for everyone – especially the little guy.
In the future, I expect that video analytics will be able to extract the image of the person and will be able to encrypt it, so that monitoring folks can’t see who it is until a law has been broken or a crime committed. Then you will be able to unencrypt the video to show who it is. This will provide even more privacy.
Technology is not taking away the power of the little guy, it is making us all more powerful as individuals. Technology also makes it easier to regulate and control the proper use of technology.
However, along with all of this improvement in our lives from technology comes those who would use it for personal gain. Terrorism is going to continue to grow as technology grows. It is Little Brother that is the bigger threat in the future than Big Brother.
That’s how it looks to me, anyway, when I step way back and look at our world with a wide angle lens.
