Post also appears on The Worldwide Culture Gonzo Squad Inc.

Canadian film maker Rob Spence is getting a cyborg camera eye. He’ll use this to secretly record people for a movie about the upcoming surveillance society.

Looking at a cell phone camera, he realized that a camcorder could now fit into an empty eye socket.  And since he had just had his eye removed — related to a childhood shooting accident– he figured he might as well use the space.

Engineers such as Steve Mann from MIT helped design the eye, which uses a camera originally deigned for colonscopies and was provided by OmniVision Inc. The device resembles  Mr. Spence’s organic eye.

Mr Spence says:

“The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me . . . People aren’t sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time.”

And that’s what I find interesting.

pic by Vanessa Bee Rieger

We’re filmed by machines every time we leave the house, are photographed at parties, tagged and disseminated all over the internet.  Yet the idea of someone we know filming us without our knowledge still causes dread.

I doubt most of us are afraid of being caught doing something we shouldn’t.  Rather, we’re afraid of looking strange to ourselves.  Of seeing ourselves how others see us, before we pose and project our ideal self forth.

This is the terror of the real.

But it’s not real.  Films are edited. We are just seeing ourselves through someone else’s eyes and these have no higher claim to truth than ours.  Like Marcus Aurelius, “I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.”

Like our own thoughts about ourselves, edited film can build a powerful lie.  It can can turn our actual appearance against us or use our own words to make us look foolish.  It turns one’s self against one.  Looking at the screen, we are no longer what we think of us but what they think of us.

And no one wants to be that.

The camera, like no other tool, uses lies to inspire the terror of the real.

But, even without the implant Mr. Reese has, even without ever having to meet and be filmed by him, we already live with the dread he inspires and we have already become Eyeborgs.

We blog, twitter and upload photos to social sites.  Anything a friend might or do might appear on the internet.  Our third eye is an electronic surveillance device — quotes, images and opinions uploaded into memory then released to the public.

This is a power that writers, journalists and artists have always possesed.  You turn the people around you into fiction, report on secrets or paint them how you see them.  This power is now in the hands of everyone.

And many of them are paying the price that writers, journalists and artists have always paid.  A lack of trust, social ostracism and paranoia.  Like them, we also lose the ability to honestly view the world. Things are no longer what they are.  Everything becomes a tool or a material in the building of a simulated world.

Pretty soon we see everything through that little electric eye.  No longer able to directly experience life, we instead look through the filter of: Can I blog this?  Will this photo look good on Facebook?  Is that comment Twitter material? Unreal and only half experienced, our lives become movies.

I, Eyeborg.

Everyone around us is also peering through that little eye.  The spectacle becomes all pervasive.  We have two cameras, filming each other’s lies, looping into nothingness.  An electric spectacle that watches itself watching itself until there’s no signal, just noise.  In that noise, we hear our paranoia.

We are Eyeborg.  Resistance is Futile.

At any moment, we may be discovered as frauds.  We may lose control of our own image and be confronted with an opposing and convincing reality; one that exposes us as the half-human, golem clones we’ve become.  Our safety is only maintained by knowing that the people who know our fakery are also fake.

Everyone has dirt on us and we have dirt on everyone.

We’re in a cold war of mutually assured destruction; a constant threat against simulated identity against simulated identity; waged with espionage as we spy on and disinform each other; in Facebook proxy wars fought with explosive tags hitting unintended targets.  Always blowing the god-damn, endless horns of personal propaganda.  To no end at all.

This is not the first time humanity has found itself in such a state nor will it be the last.  The first such occasion was probably the advent of language and the last was probably the printed press.  The Internet is just the most recent and, perhaps, the most democratic.  So there are rules to these things.

They’re hard to establish not because the technology moves faster than human social norms can appear.  We start to understand how to behave on email then we’re blogging.  We establish some rules for blogs, wind up on MySpace and find it overthrown by Facebook.  We start to understand that and we’re already on to Twitter.  And so forth and so on, faster and faster.

But here are a few simple rules that have sensibly governed Eyeborgs for years and will, if correctly applied, sensibly govern us.  Things that will reduce the paranoia, increase the confidence and allow us to be real people.

Off the Record: Even reporters understand that some things are off the record.  Though the trusted zone will vary from person to person, each Eyeborg needs one.

I would suggest that email is always off the record.  If people want to speak openly with you, they have options.  FB Walls, Twitter, etc.

We should assume, when meeting someone in private or public, that they are much like Mr. Reese and we are being recorded.  Therefore the responsibility is on the person being recorded to say:  “I’m off the record.”  The recording Eyeborg should always comply.

The exception to this is when the person is engaged in a professional relationship with you that’s non-cultural, not part of a publicly funded office and has a reasonable expectation of privacy.   They are not actors and there is no stage.  You have not paid them for their appearance.  I want to film some stuff at my tailor’s shop.  You can be damn certain I asked for permission first.

“Foodies” should all be shot.

Change the Names to Protect the Guilty, the Innocent and Yourself: This tactic has been employed by fiction writers since there’s been fiction writers.  Should you blog about personal matters, write under a false name and change the names of the people you write about.

Writing about your life and friends is not reporting.  It never has been.  It’s fiction and there’s nothing wrong with that.  Figure out how to lie and how to use lies to get you closer to the truth.  That’s the art of it.

Trying to avoid hurting or exposing real people is the manners.  Good writers never really have good manners.  You have to make a choice and, once you do, no bitching is allowed.  Fulfil your office.

But remember this:  Good fiction always points to ecstatic or fundamental truth.  Bad fiction revels in petty truth.  Know the difference.  Facts can be employed by dishonesty just as lies can be employed by honesty.  A malicious truth is worse than a malicious lie and neither are of any use to the honest writer.

Neither is senseless self-aggrandizement.  The office is more important than your ego.

Don’t Believe Your Own Propaganda: It’s fine to propagandise yourself and to become a fictional online character.  When done properly, it might make you a better person in reality, while making for entertaining reading in irreality.

This is the art of persona and it’s completely legitimate.

Play the hero, play the villain or play yourself, but never forget that you’re only playing.  Never believe your own bullshit. Believing your own bullshit is the first step to believing other people’s bullshit.  Insanity lies that way.

These days, insanity lies every way.  At least we have that in common with the past.