January
Chrome Daydream
Chrome stars, jelly hearts and holographic colour. A nod to the glossy, optimistic graphics of the early web.
News / surveillance
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1 min read
Valued Customers
Read more . . . →The smiley face tested better than the cameras did. Six cameras on the ceiling and a smiley face on the banner, which tells you everything about who the message is really for. The shoppers underneath keep walking. The words “Smile, You Are Data” hang across the corridor in corporate blue, cheerful and completely ignored. It says “we see you” the way a terms-of-service page says “we respect your privacy”: out loud, in writing, while doing the opposite. Somewhere a server is logging footsteps, dwell times, and how long you stared at the mannequin in the window. The banner had the...
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1 min read
Nothing to Hide
Read more . . . →He’s waving at it. That’s the whole problem. The showerhead is a security camera. Water comes out of it and so does whatever the terms of service say about your bathroom data. He looks up at it with the exact face of a man who clicked “Accept All Cookies” in 2014 and has been living with the consequences since. Cheerful. Resigned. Slightly wet. This is what “I have nothing to hide” looks like with the towel off. The camera is in the shower and the shower is in the cloud, and somewhere a server just logged his rinse cycle.
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1 min read
Open Door Policy
Read more . . . →The box is anonymous. The camera has other plans. Two objects on one wall. One invites honesty. The other one films you being honest. The padlock on the box is a nice detail, given that the camera above it makes the lock purely decorative. Management will call this an “open feedback culture” in the same all-hands where they remind everyone that badge swipes are logged. The guy walking away down the corridor installed both, and he already knows what you wrote.
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1 min read
Your Face Is a Performance Review
Read more . . . →There is a nine-billion-dollar industry being built around technology that reads your face at work and decides whether you’re happy enough to keep your job. Emotion AI (cameras and software that analyze your expressions and tone of voice, and in some cases the electrical activity of your actual nervous system) is already deployed in hiring, training, and performance reviews across the country. Your employer can run a sentiment check on your face during a meeting the way they run a spell check on an email. Independent research found the tech is about 50 percent accurate. A coin flip. They built...
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