Trevor Blake: Three Predictions Part One, ‘Who’s That Girl?’
P
The first photograph was made in 1826. The first digital camera was the Dycam Model 1, available in 1990. Some cell phones with digital cameras were available as early as 2001. Digital cameras have outsold film cameras since 2002. The low cost and ease of digital photography has led to more photographs being made.
S
Alfred Kinsey published his first Report on sexuality in 1948. In 1960 “The Pill” was first offered for sale. By the 1980s, pornography had been all-but normalized. Clinical information on sex; safe, effective and convenient contraception for women; widely available pornography – these three forces combined into a sexual revolution that is still taking place.
I
In 1992, the long history of electronic distribution of information (telegraph, fax, radio, television, computers, internet) was complimented by the invention of the World Wide Web.
P + S + I = X
Digital cameras, the sexual revolution and the World Wide Web have resulted in sexting. A 2008 study suggested a third of adults had digitally distributed sexually explicit images of themselves and nearly two-thirds had digitally distributed sexually explicit text or information.
B
Facial recognition systems were developed in the mid-1960s. By the first decade of the 2000s, digital biometric systems were in use by governments and businesses. Personal experience suggests most people have an inaccurate sense of how little information is required to correctly identify their camera, computer or internet access point. What people distribute on the internet is less anonymous than they think.
A
Once fantastically large and expensive, digital data can now be stored in small areas and inexpensively. Discretion in frequency and content is no longer emphasized in photography. Instead of taking one careful photograph, a photographer can take hundreds of photographs and emphasize the ones they prefer. Data is being stored without the permission or knowledge of those who generated it. Communication venues that were thought to be ephemeral were instead secretly archived. Usenet has folded into google, BBS’ are archived at textfiles.com, and the Web is mirrored at archive.org.
X + B + A = WHO’S THAT GIRL?
I predict that businesses exist right now that are quietly collecting millions of images of naked man and women distributed on the internet for the purpose of biometric identification. Identifications will be established with information volunteered via social networking sites. I predict that there will be false positive identifications. I predict that there will be accurate identifications. I predict the distribution or non-distribution of these identifications will generate revenue in the future and that is why the images are being archived right now. I predict these identifications will result in misfortune or difficulties for some of those identified, but that the momentum of the sexual revolution will all-but normalize not-for-profit home-made sexually explicit images and text for the majority.
