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Call for ideas: Future surveillance and anti-surveillance product design...

18:44 / 17.09.06

Right. An ex-colleague of mine e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago to ask whether or not I thought Barbelith would be interested in participating in this particular project, and I though there was a good chance that you guys would be, so I'm posting it to the board.

Basically the Science Museum is doing an exhibition called "The Science of Spying" and they're running as part of this process a call for ideas from smart thinking people (whether they're professional designers or not). The theme they're interested in is getting ideas for surveillance and counter-surveillance products of the near future. The best ideas will then be developed for the exhibition by experienced product engineers and displayed in February.

Basically the format is that you send in some conceptual drawings and some supportive explanatory text. They're looking for stuff that actually could happen and could be explainable to visitors to the exhibition, but are not expecting detailed designs for real or workable products. The concept and some treatment is enough.

Now unfortunately the deadline for this is quite short now - you've got basically two weeks if you're interested. If you're interested then there's more information in this downloadable PDF: Future Spy - Call for Ideas. It occurs to me that if this interests you guys, perhaps you'd like to use the design forum or the collaboration as a space to show off what ideas you've had and get feedback from the rest of the community? There is also a £250 bounty for any ideas that get taken further.

The subjects seem entirely perfect for Barbelith and you're a creative bunch of people. I'd love for us to get behind this one. It could be enormously exciting.

22:35 / 17.09.06

uh... you want us to help design surveillance equipment and concepts?

am i alone in feeling a little uncomfortable about the idea of being part of a project that may lead to the more efficient erosion of our civil liberties?

or perhaps i misunderstand the exhibition?

ONLY NICE THINGS

01:09 / 18.09.06

There's always counter-surveillance, toks.

02:52 / 18.09.06

06:51 / 18.09.06

I am not a Terrorist

10:47 / 18.09.06

Let that be the end of it. I don't believe this is the place for increasingly surrealist Google searching. I only wanted to take a sleazy potshot at toksik.

Topic ahoy!

10:53 / 18.09.06

I think it's really interesting but I am unlikely to join in since I do not have an inventor's brain; or rather I do but most of the things I come up with would be far to expensive to make, what with my penchant for fine jewels and precious metal.

It's a good idea though, and if people put their minds to counter surveillance that would be the way to go.

10:12 / 20.09.06

Jamais Cascio's 'Participatory panopticon' is a good place to start on this from my perspective: how we can use thw now widespread access to cameras and communications for surveillance to expose and curtail the worst actions of governments, big business etc.

00:42 / 22.09.06

I don't think you should think about it as such as designing things to help people being oppressed, but signalling the future that you think is to come - and that can be as much of a warning as a celebration. You could, for example, design a product that is so intrusive and disturbing that it would scare people away from that kind of path. Really make them think. Or you could illustrate some concept that you think might be the only way to protect your privacy in the future. It doesn't have to be a functioning operational object, just an idea, some concept drawings or whatever. To give you an interesting guide to the kind of thing you coudl do - Wired magazine has a set of 'objects from the future' that they put in the magazine each month. Here's a futuristic school report: School report. Doing an illustration of a concept like that (without having any sense of how you'd build it, could be a really interesting way of progressing.

18:22 / 27.09.06

I've entered an item of countersurveillance clothing.

I'll post if I hear any further.