People were scared of the dark.
That's literally where this starts.
Paris.
Louis XIV.
People are getting robbed.
People are getting murdered.
Night comes and the city basically turns off.
Okay.
Put up street lamps.
Makes sense.
Now the rich guy can get home.
The respectable guy can get home.
You can see around corners a little better.
Great invention.
Small problem.
The police can see you too.
And if you were already somebody the police didn't like?
Vagrant.
Outsider.
Poor guy wandering around.
Person with nowhere respectable to be at 2 AM.
Your night just got substantially worse.
The light was protection for one person and basically a giant fucking flashlight pointed at another.
Immediately.
There was no hundred-year grace period where everybody enjoyed the nice lamps before somebody discovered they could be used for policing.
No.
The thing is useful.
Of course the police are going to use it.
Low-level crime.
People hanging around.
People they don't want there.
Dissident shit.
Whatever can now be seen.
The first function creep.
WE CAN SEE YOU NOW.
People start smashing the lanterns.
The French were extremely into smashing lanterns.
Eventually during the Revolution the lantern itself is basically an object of authority.
Government puts up big glowing thing that helps government see you.
Break glowing thing.
Government responds normally.
You can get sent to the fucking galleys.
Big row boat.
Row forever next to thieves and killers because you broke the lamp.
Do not damage the safety equipment.
:)
Anyway.
The street lamp wins.
Nobody cares anymore.
You walk under one every night.
You don't think:
WOW.
AN EARLY PIECE OF POLICE SURVEILLANCE INFRASTRUCTURE.
It's just a street lamp.
This keeps happening.
Then we get CCTV.
Some gay little town in New York in 1968 installs eight cameras over its downtown.
Free trial basically.
Some television entrepreneur wants to show everybody the future.
Cameras up.
Feeds going back to police.
Everybody thinks it's kind of gay.
Big ugly cameras staring at you.
The thing looks oppressive because it literally looks like oppression.
Metal box.
Lens.
Mount.
Sometimes the fucker turns.
WHIRRRRR.
Oh okay.
It's looking at me.
The old camera actually had manners.
It announced itself.
YOU ARE CURRENTLY BEING WATCHED.
People hated this.
Privacy.
Big Brother.
Why the fuck does the police department need to watch everybody walking downtown?
Reasonable question.
Then crime goes up.
60s.
70s.
Murder.
Robbery.
Everybody gets scared.
And the camera has the greatest sales pitch in human history:
WHAT IF SOMETHING HAPPENS?
Fuck.
Okay.
Keep the camera.
Maybe add another one.
The camera is useful now.
That's always the problem.
If surveillance did nothing nobody would want it.
The CCTV camera can actually catch somebody.
It can actually show what happened.
It can actually make somebody think:
Maybe I don't rob this store directly underneath the giant camera.
You start policing yourself.
Nobody even needs to be watching.
You see the eye.
You change what you're doing.
Then 9/11 happens.
Now we're done pretending this is weird.
WHAT IF TERROR COMES HERE?
Good point.
Camera.
Camera.
Camera.
Airport.
Train station.
Store.
Street.
Lobby.
Parking garage.
Elevator.
Whatever.
Put one there.
Nobody wants to be the guy arguing about privacy while there's a picture of the burning Twin Towers on television.
And millions of cameras go up.
But something interesting happens to them.
They stop looking as evil.
Little black dome.
Bubble in the ceiling.
Tiny thing in the corner.
No more giant robot eye going:
WHIRRRRR.
The camera learns to shut the fuck up.
You stop changing how you walk because half the time you don't even notice it.
Way more discreet design.
Then tech figures out something even better.
You don't need the camera at all.
Google.
Google builds these gigantic computing systems.
Data centers.
Servers everywhere.
An absurd amount of engineering talent.
Some of the smartest people alive.
And what do we use a huge portion of this intelligence for?
Ads.
Extremely good ads.
Google Ads is fucking good.
That's why everybody uses it.
They figured out that human behavior is valuable.
What do you search?
What do you click?
What do you stop on?
What do you ignore?
What do you buy?
Where are you?
What do people like you buy?
What did you almost buy?
How do I make you finally buy the thing?
And the beautiful part is you get basically nothing for cooperating except:
Google works.
Which is enough.
Here is the greatest information retrieval machine ever built.
Free.
:)
Just use it normally.
We will figure out the rest.
This is so much better than CCTV.
CCTV feels like somebody is watching you.
Google feels like you're using Google.
The surveillance doesn't even feel like surveillance anymore.
It feels like a product.
Then Facebook copies the basic deal.
Instagram.
TikTok.
Everybody.
Now you're literally scrolling through an algorithm made out of observations about you and then purchasing things directly from it.
Instagram ad.
Buy.
TikTok Shop.
Buy.
The algo knows you like the thing.
You like the thing.
Transaction complete.
Nobody thinks:
I HAVE BEEN TURNED INTO AN ADVERTISING PROFILE.
You think:
Wait this shirt is kinda hard.
Add to cart.
We've achieved the grey sludge.
Perfect consumer.
Perfect profile.
Perfect little behavioral dataset.
Then surveillance becomes fun.
Ring camera.
Now YOU install it.
Nobody has to do anything.
You buy the camera.
You put the camera on your house.
You download the app.
And honestly?
Makes sense.
Porch thief.
YN checking everybody's car doors.
Guy doing 70 through the subdivision.
Weird dude walking around.
Dog got loose.
Raccoon.
Bear in your neighborhood.
Guy falling down your stairs.
Holy shit look at this retard stealing the Amazon package.
Send video.
Post video.
Neighbors app.
ANYBODY KNOW THIS GUY?
SUSPICIOUS CAR.
WATCH OUT.
And now surveillance footage is content.
It's kind of fun.
You watch it.
You laugh.
You send it to somebody.
The neighborhood has a little television station now and half the programming is:
LOOK AT THIS FUCKING GUY.
People WANT this.
That's important.
People like surveillance.
They just like surveillance from the correct side of the lens.
I want to know who stole my package.
I do not want somebody to have a searchable record of everywhere I drove today.
I want to see the guy speeding past my house.
I don't really want him seeing me every time I leave mine.
I want the camera pointed at the scary person.
Not me.
Extremely normal human preference.
Unfortunately those are becoming the same system.
Then Flock comes along.
And Flock has learned basically everything.
The street lamp taught us:
Make surveillance look like public infrastructure.
CCTV taught us:
Watching public movement is incredibly useful.
Google taught us:
Collect enormous amounts of data first.
You can discover uses for it later.
Ring taught us:
People will literally buy surveillance themselves if it makes them feel safe.
And modern industrial design taught us:
PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THE THING LOOK LIKE A FUCKING PANOPTICON.
So what does a Flock camera look like?
Little black thing.
Pole.
Solar panel.
That's basically it.
The solar panel is so fucking funny to me.
Because you see solar panel and your brain goes:
Oh nice.
Infrastructure.
Green.
Municipality.
Maybe they're measuring traffic or something.
Responsible little device.
Then underneath it:
camera.
The solar panel almost directs your eye away from what the object actually does.
It belongs next to the street light.
It belongs next to the stop sign.
It belongs next to the utility box.
It looks like something that was always supposed to be there.
And the design people literally cared about discretion.
Fit different places.
Easy to install.
Don't get noticed by criminals.
That last one.
Holy shit.
Don't get noticed by criminals.
Who is the criminal?
We don't know.
That's why we're recording everybody.
:)
This is the final beautiful inversion.
Old surveillance:
WE THINK YOU DID SOMETHING.
NOW WE WATCH YOU.
New surveillance:
WE WATCH EVERYBODY.
IF YOU DO SOMETHING WE CAN SEARCH IT LATER.
Plate.
Time.
Location.
Direction.
Plate.
Time.
Location.
Direction.
Another camera.
Another road.
Another city.
Another search.
Where did this car go?
Where was it yesterday?
What cars were nearby?
What plates keep showing up here?
Useful.
Useful.
Useful.
Useful.
Of course it's useful.
Flock starts in 2017.
Now there are over 120,000 of these things in the United States.
That happened extremely fast.
And the pitch is basically:
PUT THEM ANYWHERE.
No utilities?
Solar.
No wiring?
Fine.
No traditional infrastructure?
Who cares.
Place camera.
The government is still trying to decide which form you need to fill out.
The camera is already there.
This is the end state of bureaucracy.
Some city employee is on page 73 of a procurement review.
Silicon Valley guy:
I put it on a pole.
Good luck.
This is basically the Google strategy entering physical space.
Move first.
Build network.
Become useful.
Now everybody has to negotiate with the thing that already exists.
They even explored putting the shit on moving cars.
Uber.
Lyft.
Delivery drivers.
Dashcams.
This apparently never actually became the giant deployed network they were considering.
But somebody thought of it.
That's enough.
Because it's the perfect endpoint.
Why put cameras on poles when random people are already driving around all day?
Uber driver becomes sensor.
Lyft driver becomes sensor.
Delivery guy becomes sensor.
You ordered pad thai and accidentally received:
MOBILE LICENSE PLATE MAPPING.
The guy didn't even know he worked for the panopticon.
He's just trying to finish the delivery.
And then Axon wants in.
Body cameras.
Police evidence.
Cloud software.
All this shit wants to converge.
Ring footage.
Bodycam.
Plate reader.
Public camera.
Private camera.
Dashcam.
Database.
Search.
Make physical reality work like Google.
WHERE WAS THIS CAR?
WHO WAS NEAR THIS HOUSE?
WHAT HAPPENED HERE AT 11:42?
Pull it up.
And again:
this will catch bad people.
That's why it's going to work.
This will solve actual crimes.
This will probably find actual missing people.
This will probably catch actual murderers.
Great.
That doesn't make the architecture less insane.
It makes it much easier to build.
Nobody wakes up and says:
I would like a private company to build an enormous searchable map of human movement.
They say:
Somebody stole my Kia.
Can we catch him?
Yes.
Okay do it.
Guy did 90 through the neighborhood.
Can we catch him?
Yes.
Okay do it.
Somebody murdered somebody.
Can we find the car?
Yes.
Obviously do it.
Missing kid.
Can we search the cameras?
Yes.
DO IT.
Reasonable.
Reasonable.
Reasonable.
Reasonable.
Reasonable.
Eventually you look up and the whole fucking country is searchable.
Nobody ordered that.
Everybody ordered one feature.
This is why I don't really buy the argument that surveillance gets forced on people.
Sometimes.
But a lot of the time people fucking beg for it.
They just imagine themselves as the person being protected by it.
Louis XIV:
Light the street so respectable people can get home.
Great.
Police immediately:
Oh wow we can see all these other people now too.
CCTV:
Watch the dangerous guy.
Great.
Wait.
You're in the frame too.
Google:
Make the internet useful.
Great.
Wait.
You're the product profile.
Ring:
Watch my porch.
Great.
Wait.
Now the whole neighborhood is uploading footage.
Flock:
Find the criminal's car.
Great.
Wait.
You have to record every car to know which one becomes the criminal's car.
That's the trick every time.
Security is function creep.
Not because everybody building it is secretly sitting in a room going:
HOW DO WE DESTROY PRIVACY TODAY?
It's worse.
The next use is always kind of reasonable.
The next camera is always kind of reasonable.
The next database query is always kind of reasonable.
The next integration is always kind of reasonable.
Then one day some cop is searching his ex-girlfriend's plate.
Oh.
Right.
We built that.
The street lamp was obvious.
You could smash it.
CCTV was obvious.
You could look up and see the eye.
The internet made surveillance invisible.
Ring made surveillance cute.
Flock made surveillance look municipal.
Now the best camera is the one that does not make you feel watched at all.
Because if you feel watched you change your behavior.
The old camera wanted that.
BEHAVE.
The new camera doesn't.
Please.
Act natural.
Drive normally.
Go where you were going.
Don't mind us.
The data is better that way.
:)
Good luck have fun.