“How do our computers see us?”
“Maybe if we could see what our computer sees, we would stare differently.”
Here’s a fascinating article by Kyle McDonald at Wired: [1] “When Art, Apple and the Secret Service Collide: ‘People Staring at Computers.'” McDonald secretly loaded up his custom-made app onto numerous computers displayed at a Manhattan Apple store in order to create an art project. He was fascinated with the expressionless faces displayed while people use computers. McDonald is a programmer, and using his automated app, he gathered faces of Apple customers (check out the video he created based on people staring at their computers [2]).
Eventually, Apple figured out what McDonald had done. Next came the knock on McDonald’s door by the U.S. Electronic Crimes Task Force, and a lot of inconvenience [3]. What started out as an art project expanded to include a discussion of privacy and snooping, including corporate and government snooping.
What did people think of his project? Here are a few of the hundreds of comments he received:
Interesting how he as able to capture a truly expressionless face. It made me think about how too much computer time may make us retract from social interactions. Weird .
Facial expressions are partially reflexive but partially social. It’s not a surprise that expressions get bland when there is no one around to non-verbally communicate with.
We ARE social animals and we can only guess at the long term effect of computers on our species.
I like the idea of “how does a computer sees you” any Asimov reader would daydream after such sentence.
McDonald has written a long article, but it’s extremely thoroughly engaging throughout.
Also consider McDonald’s work on Blind Self-Portraits. [4]And here’s a somewhat startling piece called “Face Substitution [5].” Here is McDonald’s website. [6]
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