That´s very good and relevant point Christina. Even if the analogical equipments are still widely in use, we are mainly working in e-world within this project.

But do we get any ad value with “e” ? I mean electricity as such is nothing exclusively belonging to the social networking. Of course it denotates to web based products and servises, eBay, email, ePedagogy, but still…e sounds so 1990s.

2.0. would be better as you self suggest but it surely lacks a clear meaning. And Web1.0 included most of those “panoptical” tools you mentioned: I mean we have been leaving our traces from the very beginng of computer age. I started mine in 1994.

But the topic you raised is attractive indeed;
Anyway, I do agree that the name of our project is not good ;-(

What about blogopticon, blopticon or blogopticom, and why not netopticon, webopticon, panopticon today, life of traces, lookin at yourself….

By Raimo on 12.14.06 10:49 pm

May be this is interesting for you: http://seminare2.design.fh-aachen.de/privacy/

By r. on 12.19.06 10:18 pm

Mmh, Raimo, perhaps you are right, that just adding an “e” does not provide much more value… Ralf’s Link is interesting - thank you Ralf! - but German… There the title Privacy 2.0 is used, again this 2.0…

Your ideas of changing the name in some other kind of …opticon ignores the very important element of “everybody” and only leaves the surveilling part. But we also focus on transparency and not only surveillance. Panopticon today might work, but it does not show, that we are mainly interested in transparency and surveillance using digital media.

I like to stick at least partly to panopticon, having in mind that we are not only researching the threatening part of surveillance but also the overlapping of possibly positive effects of transparency and this mentioned threatening part.

ePanopticon for me was a compromise, it is still short and catchy. What about netPanopticon, webPanopticon, digitalPanopticon… all sounds somehow circuitous. Perhaps you can convince me to drop the panopticon… but right now I have not found an alternative. I will further think about it.

By Christina on 12.20.06 8:39 am

Yep, but to be more precise, I would like to remind you that even “ePanopticon” ignores the transparency as well. They do it both because the meaning of consept “panopticon” doesn´t include transparency, which in turn is linked to some kind of agreement of “symmetricity”.

Panopticon is strictly about surveillance, it has nothing to do with openess and equality. It is a prisonhouse, not an option or voluntary act.

In practise transparency might turn out to be surveillance, but in that case the practise is not transparency any more - it is surveillance.

The question of definitions and the name of our project are not just so called academic problems. I think it bring us to the very point of our project.

The edge or border between survaillance and transparency is a crucial one. When, where and why does transparency “slips”- intentionally or not- to survaillance?

-Rrrrr-

By Raimo on 01.25.07 7:37 pm