Survey and Surveillance...

I sat down to work on the survey...

I had finally found some time to start working out the questions ready for the following week.

Then I stopped to think.




Participants anonymous? Hmmm.

The mechanics of it would be straightforward enough.

The collection of data, analysis of the results, creation of colorful barcharts and piecharts with the stats a few clicks away.

We can all be "scientific" now.

That's terrific...(terrifying?)

Google forms, Google analytics, Survey Monkey...

Survey Monkey? 

Er....who's being made a monkey of?

make a monkey out of

1. (idiomatic, transitive) To cause a person, group, or action to appear foolish or inferior; to subject someone or something to ridicule.

Something clunked in the process.

Was I working on a survey....

a) on the teachers?
b) for the teachers?
c) with the teachers?
d) about the teachers?

Would they be research subjects now...or friends and colleagues?

What did my "administering" of the survey say about how I saw our relationship?

What would my "administering" of the survey say to the colleagues about how they saw our relationship?

Would this be seen as an unsolicited intrusion into their lives?

The telephone rings...

It takes about ten seconds to establish that this is another unsolicited intrusion.

"Good afternoon. My name is...[complete from a list]" 
"We are the bureau/corporation/office...[bar where inappropriate]."
" Of energy conservation/solar panels, life insurance...[bar where inappropriate]
"We would like to ask you a few questions..."

"Good afternoon, could you tell me where you got this number please?"

Ten seconds later the line goes dead.

The penny drops...

You roll in your penny's worth.

That penny drops.

The moment it leaves the tips of your fingers it is lost and forgotten.

You have lost and forgotten.

The Arcade, is winning.

Survey and surveillance.

I went off and found some people who could aid me in my reflection.

I Google "Survey and Surveillance" [giving Google another data point to play with.]

I start with the etymology.

survey (n.) 

late 15c., survei, "oversight, supervision," from survey (v.). The meaning "act of viewing in detail" is from 1540s. Meaning "systematic collection of data on opinions, etc." is attested from 1927.

survey (v.) 

c. 1400, "to consider, contemplate," from Anglo-French surveier, Old French sorveoir "look (down) at, look upon, notice; guard, watch," from Medieval Latin supervidere "oversee, inspect," from Latin super "over" (see super-) + videre "to see" (from PIE root *weid- "to see"). Meaning "examine the condition of" is from mid-15c. That of "to take linear measurements of a tract of ground" is recorded from 1540s. Related: Surveyed; surveying; surveyance(late 14c.).

I come across "Survey and Surveillance" by Gary T Marx (in F. Conrad, and M. Shrober eds "Envisioning the survey of the future", 2008).  

It's old (so am I) but I find some cause for pause and reflection.

"A survey is a form of surveillance. Survey and surveil sound alike and are synonyms. The former, however, does not usually conjure up Orwellian images. Rather the survey in its best light has been seen as a component of democratic society in which citizens can voluntarily inform leaders of their attitudes and needs and help clarify public policy questions and all under presumably neutral, scientific conditions that can be trusted. Survey respondents are encouraged to participate in order to "make your voice heard."

"There is risk of a kind of scientific colonialism in which various publics are expected to offer unlimited access to their personal data, but rather than serving the public interest, this can facilitate manipulation by elites pursuing selfish and/or undemocratic ends."

"A concern of some social researchers, particularly in the later 1960s and early 1970s was with the impact of survey research as part of a broader critique of social science (e.g., Gouldner,1970; Colfax & Roach, 1971; Mills, 2000). Who did the surveys serve? Who sets the research agenda? Are potential users aware of the survey’s sponsors and their reasons for seeking the information? What did the survey offer to those disadvantaged and beyond the mainstream who were disproportionately the subjects of research? What did surveys really tell us about social reality (Blumer, 1948)? Those issues have not gone away, but as this volume makes clear new issues are appearing.

Academic social researchers like other brethren in the discovery business (market researchers, investigative reporters, police, private detectives, national security agents) are surely more spies than spied upon, even if for academics this is usually in benign contexts. We all seek to find things out about others which they may, or may not, wish to reveal and which may hurt, harm, help, or be irrelevant to them –whether as individuals or more indirectly as group members (Marx, 1984)."

I come back and start to annotate the article so as to better think.

https://via.hypothes.is/http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/surveysurveil.html

I walk with the author a while.....

I compare walking with colleagues to poring over atomised, anonymised data.

Unsolicited intrusions.

I think for an instant about the objective of my research: to discover to what extent language teachers are able or willing to use complexity perspectives to inform their practices.

I wonder about the unsolicited intrusion of researchers.

While no doubt colleagues will be willing to contribute, I wonder about my positioning as regards the group.

I reflect on my desire to enable participative reflective practice in an educational community.

I reason that it may well be necessary to continue to take time to build dialogue, to unearth questions which we might share together.

Participation between learners, learner-teachers and learner-researchers.

Whose game are we playing?

What if nobody wants to participate?

What if everybody only wants to go home and do something else?

What if the problem of education is that it is about sorting of people into categories (boxes)?

What if the problem of education is that it is about preparing people to play roles in an arcade?

What if understanding complexity was a just an avoidance of understanding the real game?

Ticks, clicks, ones and zeros.

Is a survey appropriate for my purposes?

I suppose the answer is that it can be... if the participants themselves are involved in its design and interpretation and buy into its objectives... (I note down what appears an appropriate term - buy.)

I find myself suspicious of those boxes, of those ticks, those clicks, those ones and zeros.

Is a dialogue box really about establishing diaglogue?

I know that such stuff might give me credibility.

Lost in translation.

I come back to a Virtually Connecting session with Steven Thorne. 

Even if the participants to a research study are willing what happens to their participation?

How accessible is the language used once moments of their lives have been disembodied,  "their data" is researched, analysed and interpreted?

I am reminded of "Extraction".

I am reminded of "Submission".

A person becomes a learner or is it the other way round?

A learner doesn't necessarily become a researcher even if he/she searches.

Is language all about being part of a group with more or less power?

Do we use language so that we may be recognised as "being somebody"?

I listen to "researchers" addressing the criteria for research being "good research".

I listen to "keynotes": speakers get warm introductions, and more time.

People listen attentively, laptops open.

People wait for the ritual moment when they will be asked for a question.

Most remain silent.

They close their laptops.

They wander off into the lobby for coffee.

What is it that they do in the lobbies while drinking coffee?

What is it that they are really doing in conferences?

I am reminded of academia being a reputation economy.

I am reminded of "What are you?"

I am reminded that "My lawyer is a dog..."

Whose boxes are we/they trying to fill?

Case studies.

I think back to being in hospital.

I think of parts of my body which suddenly become pathologised, they are dispossessed.

I think of losing control, of being impotent in the face of expert medicalese.

I am a case.

On leaving the hospital, I am asked to complete "a survey of satisfaction" to enable management to "better provide for patients needs."  

"I mean really?"

False friends...

I consult Facebook and I find its intrusion ever more grating.

It's that false friend who is ever ready with soothing words and a sly agenda.

"Want to share an update Simon."

"You haven't shared an update in a while, Simon."

"Good morning Simon."

"It's [insert name]'s birthday. Send her your good thoughts."

"[insert name] likes your post, commented on your video, reacted to your video, etc etc"

"I see you are in the hospital Simon, want to share an update with your friends?"

I turn off the access to my location.

I remember to go and remove access to my camera.

The fucking camera guy.

I Google him and find that I am not alone in hating him (it).

I fucking hate this guy #Facebook pic.twitter.com/qi03hKQEOY

— Eli Braden (@EliBraden) April 28, 2017

I go back and find that article I shared this morning on platform capitalism.

We need to nationalise Google, Facebook and Amazon. Here’s why. < but it ain't gonna happen IMHO https://t.co/Ex71Pcwkqi

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) August 30, 2017

 I see yet another survey/quiz call it what you will asking me to profile myself.

I avoid it, despite peer pressure.

Aren't we all having fun?



In the search box.

I am in this box, I leave a trace of my passing.

I have still not "reclaimed my domain."

It's still Google's.

In the dialogue box.

I completed a survey on lurking in CLMOOC the other day.

I did it because the researchers are my friends.

I finish writing this.

I don't finish the survey.

I leave myself time to think.

I leave a few data points for others unknown, unknowable to track.

Will I be receiving targeted ads on hospitals,  or viagra this evening?

Will my health insurance be more expensive?

Will I, as a researcher, be an anaesthetist who sends patients to sleep or an activist who, with others, facilitates peoples' awakening?

Web We Weave.

The Spider and the Fly

“Will you walk into my parlour?” said the Spider to the Fly,

 'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;

  The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,

   And I've a many curious things to show when you are there.”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,

 For who goes up your winding stair

     -can ne'er come down again.”

“I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;

 Will you rest upon my little bed?” said the Spider to the Fly.

“There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,

 And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly,  “for I've often heard it said,

 They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!”

Said the cunning Spider to the Fly,  “Dear friend what can I do,

 To prove the warm affection I 've always felt for you?

  I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;

   I'm sure you're very welcome — will you please to take a slice?”

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly,  “kind Sir, that cannot be,

 I've heard what's in your pantry, and I do not wish to see!”

“Sweet creature!” said the Spider,  “you're witty and you're wise,

 How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!

  I've a little looking-glass upon my parlour shelf,

   If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself.”

“I thank you, gentle sir,” she said,  “for what you 're pleased to say,

 And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day.”

The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,

For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:

So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,

And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.

Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,

“Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;

 Your robes are green and purple — there's a crest upon your head;

  Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!”

Alas, alas! how very soon this silly little Fly,

Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;

With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,

Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue —

Thinking only of her crested head — poor foolish thing!

     At last,

Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.

He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,

Within his little parlour — but she ne'er came out again!

And now dear little children, who may this story read,

To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:

Unto an evil counsellor, close heart and ear and eye,

And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly.

Mary Howitt 1829

Footnote.

Surveillance self-defense against the Trump Administration 

"With Trump eager to misuse his power and get revenge on his perceived enemies, it’s reasonable to conclude there will be a parallel increase in abuse of power in law enforcement and the intelligence community. Activists who put their bodies on the line trying to protect basic rights — freedom of religion, freedom of speech, civil rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, privacy rights — will face the brunt of it."

The Intercept November 12th 2016

https://theintercept.com/2016/11/12/surveillance-self-defense-against-the-trump-administration/

Open: light & dark.

“The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be both neutral and independent, to criticize and attack them in such a manner that the political violence that has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them.”  

Michel Foucault

"We couldn't be doing today what we're doing right now without openness." Alec Couros


"By high school you should have a fully developed outside (digital) presence." Alec Couros
 
 "If I ever really wanted to leave Facebook, I couldn't 'cos the imposters would basically subsume, would take over that role, they would take over me." Alec Couros.  

"We let technology into our lives. And now it's starting to control us."

Two years later, in 2000, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig predicted that the internet would become an apparatus that tracks our every move, erasing important aspects of privacy and free speech in our social and political lives. “Left to itself,” he said, “cyberspace will become a perfect tool of control.” A sceptical reviewer scoffed: “Lessig doesn’t offer much proof that a Soviet-style loss of privacy and freedom is on its way.”


"How can I protect myself from government snoopers?"


"As an ordinary citizen with a life, you can’t hide from the security services, any more than you can defend your house against a tank regiment. If they want to hack your devices, they will."

Jack Schofield 

Information retrieval.

Jill Layton: Doesn't it bother you, the sort of things you do at Information Retrieval?

Sam Lowry: What? I suppose you'd rather have terrorists.

Jill Layton: How many terrorists have you met, Sam? Actual terrorists?

Sam Lowry: Actual terrorists?

Jill Layton: Yeah.

Sam Lowry:... Well... It's only my first day.

Terry Gilliam. Brazil. 

"Google, democracy and the truth about internet search"

I feel like I’ve fallen down a wormhole, entered some parallel universe where black is white, and good is bad. Though later, I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016 and found one of the underground springs that has been quietly nurturing it. It’s been there all the time, of course. Just a few keystrokes away… on our laptops, our tablets, our phones. This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight.

Carole Cadwalladr

 

Footnotes.

"On a lighter note."

"We couldn't be doing today what we're doing right now without openness." Alec Couros

I had no words to add.

Panopticon.

OMNISCIENCE

"God knows what you are thinking. When you kneel down to pray he listens."

I was never very comfortable with the idea of being subject to divine surveillance. 

I knelt as an infant, I knelt reluctantly as a child, then I knelt no more. 

SEPARATION

The line of beds were lit up by matron's torch-light. 

She was there standing, observing the pupils. I turned over, pulled the covers over my head.

I closed my eyes and played dead. 

I craved to dream.  

I heard her footsteps in the corridor.  

She had left. 

I turned back to face the shadows in the doorway.

All the other boys seemed asleep.

"On he wandered, gaping exploring, a little , with no company but those thoughts of his. He felt very small, very strange and horribly lonely...

He had no right to feel lonely."

Gunby Hadath, Major and Minor, Boys Own Paper, 1937

TRANSITION

"On his way to bed he had time to learn from some other boys that there existed in the school a gang of bullies whose custom it was to visit all new young boys on the first night and give them something to remember. He lay there shivering and sick in his cubicle. When the lights were out, he heard the gang arrive and visit other cubicles. Presently after what seemed like long hours his turn came. He was ordered to get out of bed which he did. He was asked his name and he replied... Whereupon he received a blow to the face. More questions and a thrashing followed. Finally cold water was poured over him and he was left."

Lady Lugard, The Lugard Papers.

INCORPORATION

Where are those we have known, those that will understand what we live, those that smile or weep in recognition at our stories, those that make us feel less alone?

I typed in the personal details, chose an unlikely password and was confronted by a barrage of questions.

Was I single? Was I in a couple? Was it complicated? Where did I go to school? Where did I work?What books did I like? What music did I listen to? What movies did I love?

It felt like I was being sized and shaped, it felt like I was being fitted to purpose.

CUBICLE

There was never any means of escape.

Those who ventured beyond the frontier found themselves "out of bounds" and were thrashed.

Everything remotely personal I hid, I locked in a box, I dispossessed, I gave away.

I became an other.

I locked myself in the cubicle.

I read the graffiti, it was more grim than amusing.

I sheltered in the library on a Sunday morning.

Nobody came.

I didn't care for dusty books, I only cared for finding refuge.

It was a privacy of sorts.

PANOPTICON

It is a privacy of sorts: this page, my thoughts, these words.

"God knows what you are thinking. When you kneel down to pray he listens."

I knelt as an infant, I knelt reluctantly as a child, then I knelt no more. 

Does God read crude graffiti?

Will I be punished?

We are here in our cubicle, with our blue uniform, now grown up, well drilled and fearful.

"We have to be practical. Drill is little good without shooting."

J.P. Way 1900

Will I be shot?

How is it that we have become so satisfied with so little?

Who prowls our drill ground at night?

Is it not so kindly matron?

A war plane screeches overhead.

My thoughts are scrambled an instant.

My dreams are on their knees, quaking.

PRIVACY

Whose drill ground do we occupy?

What are we at war with?

I couldn't sleep, I tossed and turned, and then I got up to read.

"The Panopticon must not be understood as a dream building: it is a diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to its ideal form."

Michel Foucault.

Laboratory rats.

“These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.”

Douglas Adams.

It was the mouse which brought me to computing.

Little did I imagine that it would become a protrusion into my own privacy, a threat to our freedom.

Learning management.

I looked at the data available to me on the learning management system.

I tried, I honestly did try, to see if I could do something with all that data to help my pedagogy.

I quickly gave up, I didn't have time to teach, I was an unwilling or incompetent data analyst.

How the hell were clicks more telling than a learner's pace of breathing, posture, expression, smile, sigh?

The data came into its own for those who had the ear of the management.

No doubt they had less time for sighs or smiles and more time for numbers.

Who, after all, has the time to really listen to each student, to each teacher?

I have a feeling that I am failed as a teacher (that should read ambiguously).

Data brokerage.

I was reading up on the deal I have "agreed" with Facebook.

"98 Personal Data Points That Facebook Uses To Target Ads At You."

I have come to the conclusion that as far as the silicon valley is concerned  I am a lab rat.

I am:

• a Facebook Lab Rat, 
• a Google Lab Rat (but not a Google certified teacher), 
• a Twitter Lab Rat. 
• an Amazon Lab Rat. 

I can even choose the feed I get from Facebook by editing the info they have on me.

Oh joyful squeak!

I get to modify the feed!

I suppose this is "personalised learning."  

Erggh..spit, spit.

I am:

• a well trained Lab Rat.
• a MOOC badged Lab Rat.
• a Life Long Lab Rat.

Which good researcher/marketer/government agency is extracting the data?

What the hell is the difference between a researcher/marketer/government agency?

Aren't they all part of the same system?

Aren't they all "vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings"?

I go and install the Ghostery Extension on Chrome.

I know that it won't be long before I trash it again.

It feels oppressive.

I watched with horror a short documentary about data brokers.

For which data brokers are we lab rats to?

Aren't we all lab rats to some agency?

1984

I fell upon a page of quotes from George Orwell 1984

"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting  both of them."

Doublethink:  I am a servile lab rat banging on the cage while expressing 'freedom' of speech here.

"Ignorance is strength."

Ignorance, Isn't that the most comfortable state? Doesn't a critical mind make you weak?

Ignorance, Isn't it that which is enabling the rise of racist, populist, fascists?

I read Foucault.

“The strategic adversary is fascism... the fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.” 
Michel Foucault

"Fascism in us all?" I prefer to ignore it.

Ignorance - so much bliss.

"The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind happiness is better."

Freedom: Do I seriously want freedom? I am not so sure.

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."

Rebellion: What is the price of consciousness? How can one rebel while remaining a lab-rat? (one can't)

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past."

History: Who controls this history of mine? Who is aware of my fingers tapping on the board?

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever."

Picture: Do I really want to be conscious to such a picture?

I am somebody's lab rat.

I find a quote of Foucault.

"Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are."

"Freeish Speech".

I go and find a panel discussion between Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald, and Edward Snowden (in a distant unspecified location) on the question of privacy.


I refuse to accept happily being an ignorant lab rat.

I am weakly conscious of my state.

I shall bang angrily on the cage.


Photo Credit:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/coreyburger/4802199595

Behind closed doors.

All discussion was useless.

Sentence had been passed.





Fat reddened neck, sweat glistening, opened shirt collar, tie slightly to one side, beige suit,  I watched between my legs as he raised his arm high.

Time seemed as if suspended.

I was taken aback by the severity of the impact of the metre long bamboo cane.

Then he did it again.

My confidence in school justice took a hefty wallop.

My mates were pretty impressed at the heroic bruising which lasted two months.

I was one of the fortunate ones.

I met a fellow victim of gratuitous violence a few years on.

In retrospect, it is amazing that he survived.

Over a period of four years, the red-neck beat the child over 145 times.

I do not apologise for opening the door.

Heavy petting

There were a number of us who brought their pet rodents to school.

One even had a snake.

I must have been captivated enough in Latin class.

I called my gerbil twins Romulus and Remus.
.
They accompanied me in their cage to school.

I was somewhat envious of the kids who were invited on the boat in the Lake District.

I was one of the fortunate ones.

The science teacher didn't seem to go for me.

Pet grooming led naturally to heavy petting.

I do not apologise for opening the door.


Painting and decorating

The kids were not the studying types.

The kids were not keen apprentice painters or decorators.

They were docile, drugged and compliant.

They had, as far as their teachers' reports read, completed the English program.

They had, as far as their student exercise books read, copied the English program.

They had, as far as I could make out, understood nothing of what they had spent so many hours copying.

They had decorated the space.

There was one kid who always arrived late.

He appeared incapable of any sort of concentration.

He was blind in one eye.

He had problems of balance due to a deformity of his inner ear.

He clearly didn't have the slightest idea of what was going on.

Apparently nobody bothered to mention to him that being forbidden from climbing up ladders or on scaffolding might some day handicap any attempt of his at finding meaningful employment.

I gave up with English, we listened to the kids speaking Arabic, Portuguese, and Wolof.

They seemed to enjoy speaking their languages.

I didn't follow the copying program.

I was one of the untrustworthy ones.

English teaching seemed to be superfluous.

I don't apologise for opening the door.