What’s common between John Galliano, the events in Libya and the new Ipad? A video camera, of course.
Seemingly three very different uses: one to record and denounce the unacceptable remarks of an individual. The other to report bombings that no journalist is in a position to film. The third to record friends, and converse via remote video.
And yet, these three concomitant events announce the advent of a single world, in which nothing that anyone can say or do before a third-party will remain confidential any longer.
Let us think about all the consequences:
No reprehensible act will be committed any longer, no defamatory speech, even no slander, will be pronounced without risk. A secret will no longer be kept save if it is said to absolutely nobody. The use of these video cameras will be the norm. Their absence will be the exception. No telephone conversation will be held any longer without being also in video; to refuse it will be suspect; and parents will follow their children, lovers will follow their partners, and employers will follow their employees, nobody will be able to hide from another where he is located; no intimate act shall be immune from a video camera.
Everyone will spend a lot of time self-filming, reporting his own life, to others and especially to himself, as already foreshadowed in blogs, where comments will soon be posted using video rather than text.
All these images will soon be sent without any intermediary on all television channels in the world, and everyone will even have, in a sense, his own television channel, like everyone has his blog.
Contrary to philosopher Michel Foucault’s forecast, who was undoubtedly very wrong, humans will not become an object of observation of a totalitarian power, but a subject monitoring himself, and monitoring his relatives.
Initially, this development should civilize the world: What all cultures are trying in vain to ban since the dawn of time, namely to speak ill of others, will become possible: because the victim of slander, even uttered privately, will be informed. And it will be necessary to find new subjects of conversations for diners with friends.
This ability to record everything, including private conversations, exists already through audio, with the tape recorder and its miniaturization; but the image has a strength which the audio does not have; and it cannot, for now, be forged as easily as audio.
Such is the limit of this evolution: it will hold as long as technologies do not allow crossing the border of reality and blending images of fiction with those of life. However, fortunately, it is for soon. We can already do the editing of our own pictures on the phone that filmed them; and thus we will soon be able to forge facts practically live. The image will lose its status of authenticity; and it will no longer be able to serve as indisputable proof.
Once again, the desire of imagination will have hijacked a utilitarian technique; art will have transcended economy. For the greatest benefit of democracy.