Identity has to do with "place". In less mobile societies, the place where a person finds him/herself tells us something about his/her identity. In pre-industrial times, gatekeepers had the function to control access of people to particular places, i.e. the gatekeepers function was to identify people and then decide whether somebody's identity would allow that person to physically occupy another place - a town, a building, a vehicle, etc.
In modern societies, the unambiguous nature of place has been weakened. There is a great amount of physical mobility, and ever since the emergence and spread of electronic communication technologies there has been a "virtualisation" of places in what today we call "virtual space" (unlike place, space has been a virtual reality from the beginning, a mathematical formula) The question as to who one is no longer coupled to the physical abode. Highly mobile and virtualised social contexts require a new generation of gatekeepers which biometric technology aims to provide.
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All biometric technologies capture biometric data from individuals. Once these date have been captured by a system, they can, in principle, be forwarded to other locations and put to many different uses which are capable of compromising on an individuals privacy.
Technically it is easy to match biometric data with other personal data stored in government or corporate files, and to come a step closer to the counter-utopia of the transparent citizen and customer whose data body is under outside control.
While biometric technologies are often portrayed as protectors of personal data and safeguards against identity theft, they can thus contribute to an advance in "Big Brother" technology.
The combination of personalised data files with biometric data would amount to an enormous control potential. While nobody in government and industry would admit to such intentions, leading data systems companies such as EDS (Electronic Data Systems;
Biometric technologies have the function of identification. Historically, identification has been a prerequisite for the exercise of power and serves as a protection only to those who are in no conflict with this power. If the digitalisation of the body by biometric technologies becomes as widespread as its proponents hope, a new electronic feudal system could be emerging, in which people are reduced to subjects dispossessed of their to their bodies, even if these, unlike in the previous one, are data bodies. Unlike the gatekeepers of medieval towns, wear no uniforms by they might be identified; biometric technologies are pure masks.
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Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.
User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.
"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."
(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
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American science fiction author. Most famous novel: Neuromancer.
For resources as writings and interviews available on the Internet see http://www.lib.loyno.edu/bibl/wgibson.htm
Developed under the auspices of
Written by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein tells the story of a doctor who builds a creature half man and half machine. While at first the creature is celebrated a s big success, it soon realizes that it is awakens fear among humans. As a result of the growing distance between Frankenstein's creature and the people, its longing for love and affection remains unfulfilled. Frankenstein's creature eventually turns hostile to its human environment and kills its own maker.