I know Manovich is the main focus for today's class, but I couldn't help noticing Steve Mann's article in the syllabus as well, and I just think the guy's stuff is amazing. Especially his ideas about surveillance and privacy. Maybe we can see some excerpts from his "shooting back" documentary in class?

I find his definition of privacy very interesting. He quotes from Webster's Dictionary:

Privacy
The quality or state of being apart from company or observation.

And he then expands on the theme: "Suppose we combined 'the quality or state of being apart from company' together with 'the quality or state of being apart from observation'. In other words, suppose we constructed a world in which people could not be observed when they were alone -- a world in which observation required company. People should know when they are being watched. It used to be that we would assume that when we were alone we were not being watched. So there was a clear boundary between public and private. The only cameras were people." His radical proposal is that cameras should be illegal unless wearable.

Since I've made my avatar and spread the stor.co.uk URL around these things have been arriving by e-mail:

Gallery of friends' avatars

Re: 5pixels

I scavanged my shoebox of backup disks until I found this pearl from the past. Here's the picture I took of my friend via the USC webcam in 1995:



He's the one leaning on the statue's pedestal.