Wearables and Lifelogging: The socioethical implications

In 2009, M.G. Michael and I presented the plenary article ?Teaching Ethics in Wearable Computing: The Social Implications of the New ?Veillance?? [1]. It was the first time that the terms surveillance, dataveillance, sousveillance, and ?berveillance were considered together at a public gathering [2]. We were pondering the intensification of a state of ?berveillance through increasingly pervasive technologies that can provide details from a big-picture satellite view right down to the smallest-common-denominator embedded-sensor view. Veiller means ?to watch,? coming from the Latin vigilare, stemming from vigil, which means to be ?watchful.? The prefixes sur, data, sous, and ?ber alter the ?watching? perspective and meaning. What does it mean to be watched by a closed-circuit television (CCTV) camera, to watch another, to watch oneself? Roger Clarke [3], Steve Mann [4], and M.G. Michael [5] have defined three ?types? of watching in the sociotech literature.