Is data privacy today’s dystopia?

Everywhere we go, we unknowingly carry and produce multiple types of data points. This is not news, we have been doing so for multiple years; ever since the first miniature GPS systems were invented to be put in our cellphones and devices. However, we are starting to realize the impact that such technology may have. All around the world, both public and private projects erupt and develop hyper-specific content using the data we produce. But how much of our private lives stay private? Recently, I read an article in the New York Times mentioning the new measures taken to control the number of tourists coming in and out of Venice, Italy. The goal of city officials is to disperse crowds and manage the number of tourists coming in every day, which had been increasing year after year before Covid-19 (Bubola, 2021). The city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini, says: ‘We know minute by minute how many people are passing and where they are going. […] We have total control of the city’ (2021). Although these words may sound reassuring for the police force, civilians may think otherwise. Who else can have access to our data? How many confidentiality agreements have we agreed to, without reading the small characters? The smart city seems to be developing in ways that may at times impede our privacy. There is no stopping the technological advancements of the last decades or so. While some of us think that sacrificing part of our anonymity online is worth it, others carefully avoid websites or technology that might reveal too much. In the case of Venice, this allows for fewer tourists to crowd the streets, but in turn confirms the role of the city as a secured ‘amusement park’, as one of its residents calls it (2021). A local newspaper even called Venice ‘an open-air Big Brother’, relating the surveillance system to George Orwell’s famous dystopia (2021). The social contract around privacy and anonymity in both public and private spheres is ever-evolving and will continue to take many forms as we develop increasingly complex systems. Transparency will be a key component to earning people’s trust.

Reference

Bubola, E. (October 4th, 2021). Venice, Overwhelmed by Tourists, Tries Tracking Them. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/04/world/europe/venice-tourism-surveillance.html

Image reference

Silvestri, Manuel. (March 8th, 2020). The Grand Canal is seen as the Italian government prepares to adopt new measures to contain the spread of coronavirus in Venice, Italy. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/18/photos-water-in-venice-italys-canals-clear-amid-covid-19-lockdown.html

Promenading living room in public

The Living Room is a public art installation located in front of the City Hall in Ottawa, Ontario. Urban Keios, an architectural design firm based in Ottawa, invites people into this living room in public and, “as visitors walk around and through The Living Room, a relationship between the participant’s body and each object at the site begins.”

Figure 1. The Living Room. The living room has a doorway, some chairs, a window and a television. Image source: Judy Chen. Ottawa, 2021.

Taking on the advantage of the setting, I entered the room through two different means—through the doorway as well as through the window. This experiment allowed me to experience promenade architecturale, a concept developed by Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Promenade architecturale emphasises on movement and stresses that as one follows an itinerary of a built space, images (not just fixed objects) unfold and the views develop. By promenading the space and with what I saw along my path in and through the room I created a relationship with the objects. I was intrigued by learning the different relationship I created with the objects and hence the changes in my practices. When I entered the space through the doorway, I saw the chairs and the TV and their relational position; I saw an event unfolding in front of me—that I was invited to sit, relax and watch the television. However, when I entered through the window and as I walked, the view changed—it was as if I was trespassing and I had this curiosity to keep walking and exploring around the room.

This type of private-space-in-the-public is very interesting. This living room in Ottawa inhabits a space that is neither inside nor outside, public nor private. Perhaps it is this indefinite feature that gives urban space its fluidity and imagination.

Figure 2. Doorway or window? Which itinerary would you follow? Image source: Judy Chen. Ottawa, 2021.

Figure 3. Promenading to, and later through, the living room. I stumbled across this living room as I was promenading through the City Hall while taking a short cut. Image source: Judy Chen. Ottawa, 2021.