果冻影院

The astonishing听rise听of smartphones in everyday life has created many solutions (GPS maps, internet browsing and messaging, to name just a few). But they have also brought new moral dilemmas. One issue in particular stands out in the wake of the pandemic 鈥� the fine line between care and surveillance.

We highlighted this tension in an听extensive project听which examined the use and consequences of smartphones around the world. The study was made up of 11 researchers who each spent 16 months in nine countries. Our research revealed how smartphones have demonstrably increased the human capacity for care. For example, in helping people look after frail and elderly parents.

Smartphones become听especially prominent听when those parents live at a distance 鈥� or, indeed, in lockdown.听We found听the ability to send frequent messages (what in Japan are called 鈥渓ittle bits of nothing鈥�) was perhaps more important than their content.

The project also found that the way social media allows the visual to complement oral and textual forms of conversation has become a significant element in the expression of care. For example,听we discovered听that the use of 鈥渟tickers鈥� (stickers, like emojis, are illustrations that represent emotions or actions) within LINE in Japan and WeChat in China helped to convey both concern and humour more effectively.

But at the same time, there has been increasing concern over the way smartphones听facilitate surveillance, both by governments and by corporations 鈥� what American social pyschologist听Shoshana Zuboff听calls听鈥渟urveillance capitalism鈥�.

In Ireland,听our study听focused on surveillance as part of family relations, particularly when the children of frail parents were monitoring their actions. The parents had concerns about their autonomy, dignity and privacy.

Similarly, many parents consider monitoring their children鈥檚 smartphones鈥檚 as an integral and responsible part of their care. But the children mostly experience this as surveillance. We concluded that at every level, from intimate family relations, right up to the relationship with the state, the ability of smartphones to simultaneously increase both care and surveillance was leading to new moral dilemmas.

The eruption of a global pandemic in 2020 underlined the importance of smartphones as an instrument of care due to the conditions imposed by lockdowns and sheilding. The impossibility of physical contact increased the significance of digital communication, especially for low-income populations.

For example, in Kampala, where听we found听that mobile and smartphones were the only means of contact, if people possessed neither landlines nor computers. As one village elder commented 鈥渓ife鈥檚 easier now with phones鈥�, noting how he could inform his family about problems and request their assistance.

The parallel increase in the capacity for surveillance became equally apparent when it was realised that smartphones could play a crucial role in curbing the spread of the virus through the development of听contact-tracing听apps. These apps allowed authorities to know about 鈥� and then constrain 鈥� the movement of people who had been in contact with anyone who tested positive for COVID-19.

Smartphone apps developed for this purpose have been deployed in many countries across the world. But the response to their development has been mixed. At one end of the spectrum are countries such as South Korea. Here, the technology was primarily perceived as an听instrument of care. The intrusion of the state into people鈥檚 private lives was generally accepted as far less important than the potential for saving lives. The government鈥檚 adoption of a robust approach involving multiple digital technologies is considered to have been a significant factor in its听success听in the subsequent election.

By contrast, in many other countries, the deployment of these technologies has led to considerable concern about the way they听extend surveillance听and intrusion into personal privacy. There is, for example, evidence that Republican-leaning states in the US were less willing to download such an app as compared to others, because of a听political ideology听which centred on individual privacy rights in opposition to what was viewed as an intrusive state.

This has had implications for the technology itself. Some of these countries have tended to favour the Apple/Google version, that has more inbuilt privacy protection than, for example, the app originally favoured by the UK听government, which provided more data to the epidemiologists. Each country chose its own path in this balance between听privacy and effectiveness.

The evidence shows that the development of a smartphone technology aimed at curbing the spread of a pandemic across the globe by no means ensures a homogeneous response. This is because the technology has exposed this fine line between care and surveillance.

Where one population may prioritise individual privacy, another will be far more concerned with collective welfare. So an understanding of wider cultural values will be crucial to the ongoing deployment of this technology across the world.

This article was first published in on 21 June 2021.

Links

• Original article in
• 果冻影院 Department of Anthropology
• 果冻影院 Faculty of Social & Historical Sciences

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