[Music]
I'm an artist and you know one of the
things that I really want out of art
what I see the job of the artist to be
is to try to learn how to see the
historical moment that you find yourself
living in right I mean that very simply
and I mean that very literally how do
you see the world around you and this is
the harder to do than it might seem and
many times the world around us a
complicated place there's all kinds of
structures and forms of power that are
very much a part of our everyday lives
that we rarely notice watch what you say
or do around your Amazon echo or Google
home a local consumer group warns that
down the road those digital personal
assistance may be assisting their
corporate creators more than they assist
you and one of the things I've been
working on for 15 years or so is looking
at the world of sensing looking at the
world of you know looking at the kind of
planetary scale structures that we've
been building that facilitate
telecommunications but at the same time
are also instruments of mass
surveillance your personal assistants
named Alexa or Google Alessa ask
pizzahut to place an order okay may talk
to you through these smart gadgets what
would you like to order but Amazon and
Google say their devices don't begin
listening until you say a specific word
like Alexa or hey Google
when we talk about surveillance I think
a lot of us have the idea oh there's the
security cameras and then there's
somebody standing behind you know all
the monitors and looking and seeing
what's going on that image is over it
doesn't work anymore right now the
cameras themselves are doing the
operations in other words you have a
traffic camera that camera can detect if
somebody is you know doing something
wrong and automatically issue a ticket
right so we're building these autonomous
surveillance systems that actually
intervene in the world and a lot of
people are saying that like by 2020
there'll be a trillion sensors on the
surface of the earth that are able that
are able to do this kind of thing so
this is something that's very much
transforming not only the surface of the
earth but our everyday lives as well
coming a dominant source for information
to audio technology like Google home and
Amazon's Alexa are standing by to answer
any of your questions but tonight one of
the most common names is unknown to
Google home what it tells you when you
ask about Jesus one of the most popular
Christmas gifts this year
voice-activated Google home comments
videos and test results posted asking
who is Jesus the general response from
Google home is I'm not sure how to help
you with that still no response from the
Google company on why ok Google who is
Jesus my apologies I don't understand
Google home refers to Jesus Christ when
asking about the Last Supper and even
Saint Peter and there's plenty of
information on the Prophet Muhammad
Buddha even Savior they took prayer out
of schools they just think that taking
Jesus out of everything is politically
correct these days and I think that's
the stam of a lot of our problems Martin
Collins has no doubt Google has
purposefully programmed Jesus out of its
audio speakers keep from stepping on
toes politically correctness I mean that
seems to be the thing these days more
than just what's right what's wrong
Sam's calling for answers from Google as
it's become a main source of information
readily available that so many are
becoming to depend on well we look at
what these planetary infrastructure look
like we on the left
we see an image of what Google's global
infrastructure looks like on the right
we see the National Security Agency's
global infrastructure as of 2013 the
point is these are literally
technological systems that envelop the
earth now while we're talking about
planetary surveillance systems a aka
planetary telecommunication systems
they're not only envelope the earth like
in series of cables and hardware and
infrastructure they're also in the skies
above our heads every minute of every
hour there are hundreds and hundreds of
satellites over our heads
one project I've been known again over
many many years is trying to track and
photograph all of the secret satellites
in orbit around the planet all the
unacknowledged satellites this is done
using data from amateur astronomers
amateur astronomers go out they see
something in the sky they look it up in
the catalogue it's not there they know
they've seen a secret satellite usually
an American military or intelligence
satellite they write down what they saw
what I can do is I can take that
observation model that orbit and then go
out at night model the orbit make a
prediction about where something will be
and then using telescopes and kind of
computer guided mouths I can pinpoint
the place in the sky where I think it'll
be at if you do everything right which
is rare you get an image like this and
this line here is the streak of
something called the x-37b for example
this is an American secret space drone
that's currently on its fourth mission
the x-37b so I get into the culture a
little bit of these things this is the
found the crew patch the guys that fly
this thing and this is the program
office that controls it outfit called
the rapid capabilities office who have
this motto here in Latin Opus Dei bla
bla bla doing God's work with other
people's money so this is kind of a
glimpse into the the culture of this
kind of stuff so the point is like we
have surveillance systems that exist at
the scale of the planet that literally
enveloped the surface of the earth and
literally enveloped the heavens above
the earth but the scale down in various
ways these are also articulated of
course at the scales of cities down to
the scales of living rooms down to the
scales of our bodies down to
the scales even of our thoughts and the
questions that we asked consumer
watchdog released a report that suggests
the companies may be planning on
listening and watching in the future
without you even noticing consumer
watchdog president Jamie Cort points to
patent applications by Google and Amazon
that may show future uses of these
devices watch this unexpected moment
during our interview when Alexis seems
to respond to what Jamie Court is saying
clearly Google home and you know Amazon
Amazon with with Alexa anticipate
surveilling you and watching your family
that's very creepy Google and Amazon
have not replied to our request for a
response I even asked Google who was
David Sam's Google knew who I was but
Google did not know who Jesus was Google
did not know who Jesus Christ was and
Google did not know who God was smart
speakers are a technology owned by about
40 million Americans that's about one in
six that's pretty scary it's it's almost
like Google has taken Jesus and God out
of smart audio first it started with
schools there you go see she still
doesn't understand you know I know I
don't think no if there's a wizard over
there at Google who's making these
decisions or if it's some kind of
oversight but it's definitely something
that they need to address and address
immediately we're at a point now where
Google or a Facebook or Amazon literally
knows more about me in my history than I
know about myself and what are some of
the implications of that how do we think
through that what does that mean what do
we see when we actually look through
these kinds of sensing systems well one
thing that I think becomes very obvious
when you spend some time with it because
I think there's a kind of popular idea
out there that oh technology is neutral
it's just how you use it and I want to
counter that or say there's no such
thing as technology detached from how
you use it and so when you use it and
when you deploy these kinds of systems
any kind of sensing technology sees
through the eyes of the forms of power
that is designed to amplify the forms of
power that is designed to exercise
whether that is military power or law
enforcement or commercial power etc I
think that's one thing that you start to
see and this brings up a lot of concerns
for me I worry about what the future of
these kind of planetary autonomous
sensing systems are I worry that they
have a tendency to kind of reproduce the
kinds of racism and patriarchy and
inequality that have characterized so
much of human history and also concerned
that they represent enormous
concentrations of power in very few
places and so one project that I've been
doing is just trying to go to the places
where these systems come together where
does this infrastructure kind of congeal
in very specific places a really
important part of global
telecommunications is chokepoints places
where transcontinental fiber-optic
cables come together what are the places
where the continents are connected to
one another these are really important
to telecommunications but also obviously
very important to surveillance you sit
on these places you can collect most of
the data that's going through the
Earth's telecommunication systems what
do these look like well this is a place
in Long Island one of these sites one in
Northern California at Point Arena the
west coast of Hawaii Guam was really
important to this kind of thing
Marseilles in France and what do you see
in the image nothing right the point of
these images is these are some of like
the most surveilled places on earth
these are literally kind of like core
parts of global telecommunications and
surveillance infrastructure there's no
evidence whatsoever that that's going on
in the photos of these kind of places so
what does that tell us kind of
allegorically about how some of these
infrastructures and systems work I did
start pushing this a little bit further
I wanted to say well theoretically there
should be these conjunctions of cables
in these bodies of water in these images
and so I learned how to scuba dive in a
swimming pool in suburban Berlin as you
do and started going out and studying
nautical charts and undersea maps to try
to find places on the continental shelf
where I could maybe see these
going out with teams of divers when you
do everything right you find images like
this as you can see there's dozens and
dozens of internet cables across moving
across the floor of the ocean
these are cables that connect the East
Coast of the United States to Europe a
phenomena that's been going on for a
while is a LPR automatic license plate
tracking these are systems that take
pictures of every single car that drives
by on a city street something that that
is able to autonomously read the number
of that car and either put that in a
database that the police or law
enforcement have access to or again
issue things like traffic citations
based on that all without human
intervention the same thing is starting
to come online with police body cameras
which are now being outfitted with
facial recognition technology to do
something similar one of the tools that
we have in the studio is the ability to
make portraits of people of what people
look like as they are seen by facial
recognition software and we've been
running these on portraits of
revolutionaries and philosophers from
the past and the left is the great
post-colonial philosopher Frantz Fanon
as seen through facial recognition
software on the right is Simone vial is
also obviously happening in the
commercial space you go to a modern
supermarket there are autonomous systems
identifying you trying to understand
when the last time you were there was
how much money you spent what are you
looking at what's your emotional state
what are you interested in and they're
getting more and more intimate sensing
systems looking at what kind of food do
we key are we going to the gym you know
are we in good health how are we
behaving are we drinking too much do we
smoke cigarettes what kind of objects
are in our houses and what does that say
about who we are by one Google service
can be shared with its other platforms
allowing the company to build
unprecedented profiles of users who sign
into its services so other changes good
news for consumers or just a massive
invasion of online privacy points the
ability of companies like Google to to
make predictions about all aspects of
your personal life and if we realize
that Google have got the the capability
through the data that they gather to
predict things like our political
affiliations our religious affiliations
our sexuality that kind of thing people
start to get a lot more worried
than when they just see an advert for
the car that they were just looking at
all the watch they were just looking at
yeah I mean you're an expert in this I
mean does it spook you I terrify some eh
there is this simple answer I said at
the beginning of the talk that one of
the things I want out of art is things
that help us see the historical moment
that we live in how do we learn to see
the world but there's something else
that I want out of art as well I want
something that helps us see a world that
we want to live in and if you want to
see that world you have to ask yourself
what do you want and so I spend a lot of
time looking at these technologies and
asking myself how would I want them to
be different what world do I want to
live in
you
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