The Unknown Citizen by W H Auden - Essay Example

Is he free Is he happy He should be, or we would have known. The Unknown Citizen by W H Auden (Famous 20th century English poet, considered to be one of the masters of the Modernist Movement in literature. This poem bases itself on the theme of anonymity that is imposed on the ordinary citizen due to the increase in urbanization and its attendant evils.) Introduction The postmodern era has been described as the 'cam-era.' We are all under constant watch. The development of communication technology has virtually effected the possibility of everyone to be watched. It could even be the mobile phone which you thought was your most private means of communication. The techniques of surveillance (Surveillance literally means 'to watch from above'), or the subtle art/science of prying into our private lives, have become so pervasive that today it has become a major topic of study under Culture Studies, the discipline that deals with popular culture and its related aspects including mass media and music. In a surveillance society, gathering of personal data is made out to be vital for governance or even providing a fillip to the economy. The macabre nature of this development would be clear only when this is perceived as an evolution of 'unsullied information' that one gathered from one's friend or neighbour for mutual care or out of concern. Of course, the official version is always that the collection of information is necessary for the protection of the rights of citizens including peaceful co-existence. Today, surveillance is an integral part of modern day living. Interestingly, surveillance is not a monopoly weapon of the people in power. Now counter surveillance, or the practice of avoiding surveillance is also being increasingly practiced. It is only natural if one wishes to shy away from the secret gaze of his prurient household appliances. Inverse surveillance or sousveillance (a term coined by Steve Mann, Professor, University of Toronto) is about how the citizen 'captures' the government. Thus, when a man on the street records a cop bashing up a passer by without reason, it as an act of sousveillance and not insouciance. Two more types of surveillance that are becoming significant are clinical surveillance (the constant monitoring of the outbreak of a disease, esp. that of an infectious one) and equiveillance, or a proper blending of surveillance and sousveillance (Terms related to surveillance were taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance) Surveillance Society David Lyon, surveillance theorist and Professor, Queens University, asserts that the problem of surveillance is not merely the matter of differentiation of space between the 'private' and the 'public' of a citizen or an individual. It is, more significantly, connected with human rights and social justice. In an interview conducted by Alessandro Ludovico (http://www.queensu.ca/sociology/Surveillance), Lyon says that "Today's surveillance involves 'social sorting' and calls for practices that are sensitive to who is being sorted for what purposes and with what consequences." In the name of surveillance for social security, groups which are not politically correct could also be brought under gaze, he says in his book Surveillance Society : Monitoring Everyday Life (Open University press, 2001). In the same book he refers to the concept of the panopticon, originally introduced by Bentham and later popularised by Foucault, has now become part of our lives but nonethless is something to be gotten over. The uniqueness of the book is that it does not tend to distract the reader through put-on gravity. The author's comprehensive knowledge of the subtle and yet complex systems of surveillance is often overlaid with a sense of humour: Are there really godlike operators who can control the city using a mouse and a keyboard Such absolute power is scarcely visible in practice. The sheer mass of data would be impossible to handle . Perhaps, it is this approach that makes Lyon's work gel with the 'murderous innocence' of surveillance. The book addresses many vital issues. Surveillance is often made out to be the mere gathering of information which it seldom is. Lyons connects an apparently inncoent act of info collection with the more serious one of reinforcing social divisions, especially the rich and the not-so-rich. He discovers that the path of enquiry of both the cop and the social scientist are often the same because the tolls that both use for collection of data are also identical. This has the uncanny result of clubbing the shopper and the robber. The most fascinating aspect of Lyon's work is how surveillance has made the human body a site for constant gaze (The International Journal of . More than the publications that Lyon has to his credit, it is his online content that has made him a social activist of consequence. His 'Surveillance Project'(in the Quuen's University) has found out that, in spite of the death and destruction of 9/11, a good percentage of Americans feel that surveillance surveys are intrusive. The study covered 9,000 people in eight countries (Canada, the U.S., China, France, Spain, Hungary, Mexico and Brazil) and was done by a multidisciplinary group of the University. The group believes that there is an increasing incidence of Globalisation of Personal Data (GPD) and surveillance. Technologies like personal computers, biometrics and global-positioning systems are making this possible. Lyon' study, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, touched upon consumer surveillance, racial profiling, media coverage, control over personal data and public trust in government. Kirstie Ball, Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies, The Open University, UK has an interesting project on surveillance called Globalisation of Personal Data, a multi-disciplinary and international collaborative initiative which aims to find out what happens to our personal data, and how personal data processing impacts upon the lives of everyday citizens. In her book The Intensification of Surveillance (London: Pluto Books, 2003), she writes: the globe is increasingly engulfed in media which report, expose and infect issues from around the world, these surveillance activities having important yet paradoxical consequences on actions and our states of mind. Visibility has become a social, economic and political issue, and an indelible feature of advanced societies (The Intensification of Surveillance, 2) Kirstie Ball is concerned about how the individual loses his privacy or the right to be alone. She calls it an Orwellian nightmare. The unseen specter of totalitarianism is infecting the modern society according to the author. Ball believes that surveillance has become intrusive, integrated and systematic. When the procedures of surveillance are integrated with routine administrative procedures of a government like collection of data and other personal details, it becomes so subtle and pervasive. One example of how a seemingly innocent act of filling up a form in a lifestyle shop could make one vulnerable to 'official gaze' reveals the hazards of modern day living. Surveillance, Ball argues, is Janus faced: it is beneficial because it can track criminals and it is dangerous because it renders everyone too visible, Kirstie Ball says her position as a surveillance theorist is rather unique in the sense that she, as an employee of an institution of learning does surveillance, as an academic, does surveillance studies and, as a citizen is the subject of surveillance. The occupation of conflicting positions lends her credentials more credibility (Journal of Surveillance and Society, Volume 3, Issue 2/3). In Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (New York, Pantheon, 1977), he speaks of the 'formation of a disciplinary society that stretches from enclosed disciplines, a sort of social "quarantine," to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of "panopticism." " David Lyon updates the concept of Panopticon using the new technologies of information and communication. Lyon says that the potential for ICTs to generate a generic, virtual and omnipresent observer could remodel Panopticon to create an 'Information Panopticon.' Quite often, the techniques of surveillance adopted by such a model would be beyond the comprehension of the general public or the student bodies in a campus (Dawson, JSS). 'Surveillance studies' is a cross-disciplinary initiative to understand the rapidly increasing ways in which personal details are collected, stored, transmitted, checked, and used as a means of influencing and managing people and populations. Advancement of technology has brought in new methods of surveillance. And these, in turn, have brought about more daring acts of insurgency too. Thus surveillance studies as a 'discipline' is riddled with challenges and provides the researcher with areas of further significant gazing. One of the more popular avenues of further research is through the study of literature and how it portrays various kinds of surveillance under different names, of course. Writers like Franz Kafka and George Orwell were the pioneers. They discussed how even a welfare state could be, in the name of welfare, brought under perennial supervision in the name of healthy governance and economic development. However, these pioneers who lived and wrote during the early twentieth century did not know much about computers and the Internet. Lyon cites the interesting example of a driver presenting his license to the police officer from within a private car as typical of modern day intrusion (IJSS, 1.1). In the world of modernity, people prefer a 'private' existence and this prompts the development of systems to authenticate their activities in the 'public' world. Lyon says: it is ironic that the quest for privacy produces surveillance, because privacy is also looked to as protection against surveillance. But privacy is in any case a relative term. Once, the home was thought of a private realm par excellence, a place into which others could not intrude. Now the means of surveillance flow freely through domestic spaces, in telephones, televisions, computers (Editorial, International Journal of Surveillance Studies, 1.1) Conclusion Lyon states that modernity is characterized by three factors: visibility, mobility, and classification. It has already been told that we are living in the postmodern cam-era. Digital media including mobile phones with built-in cameras have made public our private selves. Susan Sontag in her book On Photography (London: Penguin, 1977) says: "In the end-of-the-century London, Samuel Butler complained that "there is a photographer in every bush, going about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour." Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it had always been - what people needed protection from (On Photography, 15)." This kind of a reversal of roles - of the private space becoming the public domain - has defined modernity well. Moreover, privacy can no longer refer to fixed spaces. The modern world flows. Tourists flow, businessmen flow, crowds flow and images and messages flow. When the world is on the move, surveillance too has to be mobile. The sophistication in surveillance and the resultant clutter of data demands classification for clarity. Likes, dislikes, debts, assets, debit and credit cards, e-data are all classified to group people. To belong to a group is to get defined in a particular way. The individual is not the yardstick of character; it is his classification that matters. Perhaps, the major contribution of David Lyon to the social sciences is this revelation. Bibliography Lyon, David. The Surveillance Society: Monitoring Everyday Life. London: Open University Press, 2001. Ball, Kirstie. The Instensification of Surveillance. London: Pluto Books, 2003. Ball (ed.) The International Journal of Surveillance Studies. Vol.1. 2/3. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin, 1977. Read More