Ubique et nusquam are the words used by Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard to explain that albeit the divine is constantly present everywhere, its presence cannot be attributed to any particular place in space or time[i]. Again and again the contemporary discussion regarding the emergence of the ubiquitous society reminds me of these three words.
Ubiquitous computing revolves around the idea of being able to control our environment and household items through a (global) network and to connect to the network through objects in our vicinity. Such a setting surely equals ubiquitousness, but it is already rather difficult to find a location where access to the Internet would prove impossible, at least in an urban setting. In other words, the Internet is already accessible everywhere; its presence is ubique, yet ubiquitous computing only awaits us in the future. Where’s the catch?
In fact, the term ubiquitous society is somewhat misleading. Being connected to the Internet through many different channels simultaneously even without our knowledge or consent equals not only an Internet that is everywhere but an Internet that is nowhere in particular; perhaps it would be appropriate to discuss “nusquamous computing” instead.
The idea of a ubiquitous society causes fears partly because the terminology is still unclear or even unheard of to many, but also for genuine, understandable reasons. Yet the fears are often discarded as irrelevant, false, or unjustified. In the following I attempt to shed light on the underlying factors that give the fears about ubiquitousness some justification.
The lack of control over our own connections and therethrough over the information we share and transmit constitutes a serious problem where information structure, authority structure, and equiveillance are concerned. Equiveillance is a term used to describe the balance between external surveillance and sousveillance, i.e. self-generated information regarding our own doings. Societies use surveillance to improve the security of their constituents, but at times its effect on our sense of security is the opposite: surveillance cameras are often considered to cause fears.
Ubiquitous computing, by definition, gathers and centralizes information, thus creating a more centralized authority structure between actors in a society or an overtly authoritarian status for the state over its population. Such a structure – at least when coupled with a lowered sense of security amongst the population – characteristically inflicts segregation between individuals and different groups inside a society. Every society that wishes to embrace freedom and equality has to steer away from such centralization to minimize segragation and inequality between its constituents. In other words, the ubiquitous society, as promoted by the technologically religious, can easily be seen to threaten our freedom and equality as well as our (sense of) security.
The threats posed by centralized information become rather clear through an idea that Daniel Ellsberg states[ii] he presented to Henry Kissinger in 1968 when the latter was appointed U.S. national security advisor for the Nixon regime. In short, Ellsberg told Kissinger who was about to gain access to loads of classified information that this new information would provoke three reactions. First reaction would be that of gratitude and joy for the access to the information. Second reaction would be Kissinger to feel dumb because he had not known or understood this or that issue before. The third and most problematic reaction would be that of deafness towards others who do not have access to the same information: the words “if they only knew what I know” describe this emerging deafness to the point.
Further, a centralized authority structure and lack of equiveillance are best described using an uttermost example: the Panopticon, i.e. the model prison conceptualized in 1785 by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. As a prison, the Panopticon revolves around the idea that inmates have no means to observe each other or know when or from where the authority observes them. The prisoners do know, however, that they may be under observation at any given time. Michel Foucault[iii] widened the use of the concept to the societal level and claimed, in fact, that the relationship between the state and its population in modernized societies resembles panopticism. A panoptic society depends on a centralized authority structure and absolute (panoptical) surveillance, i.e. lack of equiveillance.
Turning our everyday environment and objects into information processing units that constantly share data with each other and produce information about us and our behaviour certainly enables ways to improve our lives, but the increasingly centralized information and authority structures entailed by ubiquitousness contradict our equality and our sense of security and perhaps even our security per se. It is easy to understand critical approaches towards this development.
A mere promise of objective and unintrusive use of the information produced through and by ubiquitous technology is insufficient to alleviate these fears because it is impossible and outright stupid for any authority to “know” who is to assume power in the future, in effect making it impossible to know how the gathered information will be used. New legislation regarding electronic surveillance and control of Internet usage is pending or on the drawing board in many countries all over the globe. Building up a technological utopia under the name of ubiquitous society hand in hand with dystopian legislation that enables authorities to follow who does what and where is most definitely not a road to follow.
We need thorough, wide-ranging, and far-reaching discussion on how to prevent these fears from materializing, and perhaps we are able to solve some of the problems on the horizon. We need to reach beyond and see through the deceptive benefits of “nusquamous technology” in order to ensure that we do not, in trying to create a society that functions better, create inequality and limit freedom instead; thereby destroying the very corner stones our societies are built on.
[i] Kierkegaard, Søren (1846): Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments
[ii] (2009) The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
[iii] Focault, Michel (1975): Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison