surveilled

 

Cleaning the attic… this recording aired on 11/14/2010 as part of a BBC radio series titled Americana. Jonathan Raban interviewed Jonathan Cluts and I at the Microsoft Home. We were showing off smart connected technologies and how we might use them in the future.

Raban talks about privacy and the potential nightmare of surveillance. He asks, “Will your home report back to the FBI?” I responded “…We/Microsoft believes firmly is that the individual owns the right to their own information. We choose who to share it with and how to share it, so I don’t think the fact that its digital and potentially available means that everyone has access to it…” To which asks if we’ll be immune from the NSA… He pegged that one. I was optimistic.

We did realize that inventions are often used in ways never intended, and so stressed the importance of thinking about the long term implications of what we bring into the world.

In 2006 Raban wrote Surveillance

surveilled