The Peep Diaries

Okay I was the only guy not in a tie at the Walrus lunch fundraiser I participated in yesterday. I probably should have guessed, given that it was held at the tony old school University Club in downtown Toronto. Anyway, that wasn’t the only surprise the event held: it was sold out and packed with famous Canadians including Pamela Wallin, Valerie Pringle, and others. Plus it was being moderated by Carol Off from As It Happens and taped so that a short bit of the talk could be aired on her show. (Was it? Did anyone hear it?)

I felt a touch nervous as I waited for this shindig to get going. But it all went well. I started off reading a list of books that Amazon.com recently suggested I might want to buy including The Sexual Revolution 2.0: Getting Connected, Upgrading Your Sex Life, and Finding True Love — or at Least a Dinner Date — in the Internet Age; Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry; Start Your Own Adult Web Site Business; America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction. That set the tone and away we went. Science fiction writer Robert Sawyer was my foil (he launches a new book tomorrow) and the ensuing 40 minutes or so were a sprawling battle about the future of surveillance, privacy and transparency. Afterwards, Carol told us that we should take our show on the road, which I’m pretty sure was a compliment.

So that’s what I did yesterday. It’s been a frustrating week in terms of getting writing done. E. has been sick battling a flu cold so she’s been miserable. She’s only now recovering. I spent Monday with her, then spent all of Tuesday shooting a trailer for the peep movie, then half of wed. at a Broken Pencil meeting. Then yesterday the Walrus debate. Today I’m catching up on blogging, emails and general organization. Next week, I’m writing. Nothing but writing. And blogging. Of course blogging.

Hey my article on How We Learned to Love Surveillance, published in the Walrus Magazine, is now available on the newsstands. You can read it online here but please also consider picking up a copy or subscribing since we need to support Canadian magazines!

Some good peep material on CNN today. first up, we’ve got a “news” report on a nanny mishandling 7 month old twins. needless to say, there is ample nannycam footage showing the twins being swung around and left to fend for themselves on the couch. the actual public need to see this material is somewhat doubtful though the reporter tries to salvage her credibility by ending with something about how the mom wants other families to know that they can also get nannycams and bust their caregivers.

Next up, a couple of minutes of security camera school bus action featuring what is proudly advertised as a school bus brawl. Watch burly bus driver lady and burly teens pull hair. Again, there’s an attempt to pretend this is news, not voyeurism, by ending the segment with a 4 second clip of a mom saying something like, “I’m shocked.”

I’m not.

Here’s an interesting bit of news reported by AP – Google to Store Health Records. Many people already immediately go to Google after they get back from the doctor with a diagnosis of everything from depression to cancer to cataracts. So there’s a kind of weird logic to it. It also theoretically makes sense to have our health records online so that any doctor anywhere could access them, though the image of the doc in the ER surfing your records is a weird one, hmmm…okay…allergic to nuts, ah, and here’s his blog and his online dating profile…interesting stuff he’s into, better check him for STDs while I’m at it…anyway, okay, you get the picture. The big point here is that it’s now time for us to think of some better system of making this potentially life saving info available other than 3rd party for-profit corporations who make a profit off, at least in part, reselling information about us. In Canada, for instance, where medicine is provided by the provinces, some kind of standardized government system could be imagined that 1) provides this service to everyone regardless of their access to the internet and their ability to sign up for a Google account and 2) doesn’t link it to everyday activities like logging in to your gmail. I mean how many people leave their email account open throughout the day? Overall, though, there are so many problems with how to keep this kind of material private and strictly between doctor and patient I’m frankly amazed that Google is even going there.

okay, i’m spending the day doing data entry. i’ve got hundreds of articles that relate in some way to peep culture. they all need to get sorted and entered so i can get on with the thinking and writing. in a way, this is a way of thinking and writing. anyway, here’s my favourite article so far. It’s about a fruit and vegetable processing plant that keeps its produce under surveillance. It suggests just how extensive monitoring is — they even provide their customers with video updates! Overkill or saving lives and time?

So a long gap between my first post and the next two posts. That’s because the launch date for the blog got put off until Sally (director of the peep culture documentary) got back from Paris. You see, the doc people want to film the launch of the blog. So everyone’s coming over today to capture this exciting moment. I spent the morning cleaning my office. You can see the floor now. It’s nice. I’ll take a picture.
Anyway, I’m feeling a bit anxious about the whole thing. I’ve never blogged or really had much about my personal life out there. As a writer I like to re-read and re-think everything I put out there. I’ll need to get over that. Plus, of course, the whole idea of developing an audience of people interested in peeping my life. I can honestly say that I have no idea what that will feel like. So we’ll see.

We’ve just passed Belleville, Ontario and I’m listening to the woman one row up shuffle through papers and talk loudly on her cell about how she needs help figuring out how to reboot her suddenly inoperative Blackberry. I don’t know who she’s talking to since it’s only 8:00 am. Anyway, it’s a fitting start to this blog. Am I peeping her or is she happily exposing herself to anyone who cares enough to listen? I’m not really peeping, because what else can I do but listen? On the other hand, I am doing more than listen – I’m paying attention and writing down what she’s saying.
This blog is about the rise of peep culture. Definition: a culture of mass voyeurism in which we get more and more of our kicks from peeping in on the entertaining foibles of the real lives of others; at the same time, we become more and more amenable to others peeping in on our lives.
So a bit of a peep into my morning: The train left at 7 am. I woke up at 6:10, five minutes or so before my cab was supposed to show up. Actually I didn’t wake up, W woke me up. Who knows when I would have gotten up if left to my own devices. I was counting on the kid to wake us both up at 6 am exactly, like she does every morning. Today, the little bugger decided to sleep in. So much to W’s annoyance I ended up waking them both up as I fumbled for something to wear and stumbled into the bathroom to brush my teeth.
Anyway, I grabbed my carefully packed bag, kissed everyone goodbye and jumped into the waiting cab. Five minutes later I realized I had forgotten my laptop, so we turned around. I ran back into the house past W and kid, and bounded up the stairs. W, who is the kind of person who has to get everywhere at least an hour early, shook her head in horror as I waved yet another frantic goodbye.
At this time in the morning it takes less than 10 minute to get from my house to the train station so I got there with fifteen minutes to spare – time to hit the bank machine and grab a coffee before the train pulled out. Stepping onto the train a few minutes before it left the station reminded me how annoying flying is and how great train travel is. High speed rail please!
I haven’t told you why I’m going to Kingston yet: On Monday, while compiling peep related links for this blog I dropped in on a site I’d been meaning to visit but hadn’t gotten around to yet. It was the website of the Surveillance Project , founded by sociologist David Lyon and located at Queen’s University in Kingston. I noticed that they had a talk scheduled on Thursday. A criminology prof from University of Montreal was coming to talk about public perception of CCTV surveillance cameras. Perfect material for an article I’m writing for The Walrus magazine and for the peep culture book I’m researching. So I called them up and asked if I could come visit the Surveillance Project and talk to David Lyon and the University of Montreal Prof. They set me up with 3 interviews – Lyon, the Prof and a grad student doing research on Facebook. That plus the talk seemed to make it more than worthwhile to spend a day in Kingston. I’ll be arriving in about ten minutes, so we’ll soon see if I’m right. (By the way, 2 more audible cell phone conversations took place on the train while I wrote this: One woman trying to coordinate a meeting and one woman just chatting about her life.)