The Truman Show Embedded in our Reality of Smart Homes: Will We Be Held Captive Like Truman Burbanks?

        The concept of smart homes as modern panopticons and surveillance mechanisms is a thought-provoking perspective that raises concerns about the privacy and security implications of connected technologies within our living spaces. Han (2022) says that Google presents the interconnected smart home of the future as an “electric orchestra” with the resident as a “conductor” (5). I think the idea floating around here is that the ‘digital utopia’ of a smart home is more like being confined to a smart prison. Han provides additional insight, arguing that oppression in the digital age operates not through external restraint but internal compulsion. Rather than force compliance, social power is exerted through seductive appeals that coax the ruled into self-motivated obedience.

         Han contends we willingly impose control on ourselves today, turning freedom into “unfreedom.”  Smart homes can be likened to the architectural concept of the panopticon, originally conceived by philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1791). In a panopticon, a central authority can observe all inmates without them knowing whether they are being watched at any given moment. Similarly, smart home devices equipped with cameras, sensors, and microphones can continuously monitor residents, creating a sense of constant surveillance.  Bentham’s Panopticon is a circular prison where inmates are monitored from a central tower. Bentham argued that the constant possibility of observation, even if not actualized, modulates behavior. The Panopticon principles apply to smart home devices with embedded cameras and microphones. Companies like Amazon and Google can potentially observe activities within the home through their Alexa and Nest products. Even if not under continuous surveillance, customers may unconsciously self-regulate based on an assumption of monitoring.

      Han’s theories shed light on how smart home monitoring could transition from convenience to coercion. The comprehensive data gathered forms an intimate map of who we are, and which companies and governments can employ to modify attitudes and actions through personalized persuasion. We may find ourselves policing thoughts and behaviors to fit presumed norms, transformed into obedient and diligent subjects serving external agendas.

      In smart homes, we are supposedly subjected to a panoptical gaze. It reminds me of Truman Burbanks, the protagonist of The Truman Show. Unbeknownst to him, his day-to-day life is recorded by hidden cameras. The 1998 film depicts Truman Burbank as the unwitting star of an elaborate 24/7 reality show set in the fictional town of Seahaven. Truman’s life is broadcast to a worldwide audience without his knowledge or consent, with thousands of hidden cameras allowing viewers to follow his daily activities. Even Truman’s friends and family are actors, ensuring his life follows an entertaining predetermined narrative. The absence of his consent here is what makes it a prime example of panopticon and surveillance. 

      Whereas the panopticon is the model for external surveillance, panopticism is a term introduced by French philosopher Michel Foucault (1975) to indicate a kind of internal surveillance. In panopticism, the watcher ceases to be external to the one being watched. Foucault expanded on Bentham, arguing surveillance is a primary tool of social control in modern society. The internalization of norms through potential oversight is highly effective in shaping conduct. Smart home data provides extensive information on habits and behaviors. Knowledge of such monitoring may lead individuals to conform to unwritten rules, modifying actions to align with presumed expectations.

       What Han is implying is that, if our lives become too embedded in our dependence on technology, how does that play out in the long run- which is a violation of our autonomy and consent? So, I believe our future abodes aka smart homes have the potential to become little sites of surveillance. Who will potentially hold us captive? The Government? Big Brother? Big Tech? Will we become enhanced machines with AI? 

    I suppose the concept of smart homes is akin to having consented to live under surveillance. It gave me chills when I first discovered that whatever I’m speaking is being “recorded” by my phone. I would see the advertisements and promotions of my favorite ice cream brands and/or my favorite musician’s next album release ceremony in my FB timeline. It used to make me disturbed, and unsettled and made me feel like I was being watched. I still get those chills, at times. I think we all are being livid in the “augmented reality” that we are being watched, our lives being recorded. We have been dragged towards a “false reality”. Chuck Palahniuk (1996) famously said, “Everything is a copy of the copy….”.  in his book Fight Club. It takes me to the discussion of if everything is a copy, where is the Reality? What is even R/real? Is every reality augmented and enhanced? In those so-called smart homes, we will be beholden to the idea of being watched. One of my biggest fears lies in the fact that my life will be a means of entertainment to others, especially those I don’t and will never know, probably. Making a connection to Baudrillard’s (1981) concept of Simulation and Simulacra does not seem far-fetched because he talked about how in the Postmodern age, there is no fixed reality. The notion of reality is a kind of utopian one because no one knows what is real. Since that is the case, the reality is almost impossible to tell from the copy. 

     Without fail, smart homes risk becoming pixelated prisons that curtail autonomy and self-direction. But totalitarian outcomes are avoidable. Thoughtful regulation and oversight can maintain innovation’s benefits while preventing tech from too thoroughly appropriating the self. Society must be vigilant that domiciles do not become vehicles of social control through comprehensive monitoring and personalized manipulation, especially in private realms.

Moral frameworks that protect individual dignity and agency against the Panopticon’s all-seeing eye remain vital. We must preserve spaces beyond the reach of constant surveillance so that domination operates through overt compulsion rather than silently encroaching on voluntary thought and action. 

       I am not exactly sure what that phenomenon will look like. Sometimes I feel like we will be living in a live reality show where our lives will be a thing of daily telecast, just like Truman. I am wondering who will be profiting from those events. Echoing Louis Althusser, it might just be another component of Ideological State Apparatuses (ISA), but our consent will be in the asterisk or at risk. I think Althusser would be As Antonio Gramsci (1933) stated, hegemony takes place when there is little resistance. Then again, smart homes will probably control human beings and their surroundings. Consent hardly matters when someone is controlled. 

      I am not a big fan of Sci-fi dystopian films. But while writing this blog, I thought about the future. The future in which tech will have power and control over us humans. The idea of smart homes makes me a bit disturbed. In my mind, it sounds like a dystopian thriller. Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) concept of “The medium is the message” came right back to me while reading Han and Foucault’s Panopticism. I am not sure if McLuhan would be thrilled or not with the idea of smart homes, especially when it will probably make us “less than a human” or “humanoid”. I can not tell, only assume. 

     I want to finish it with the famous Gramsci quote, which happens to be one of my favorites. 

      “The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, there arises a great diversity of morbid Symptoms”. (Selections from The Prison Notebook, 1933, p. 43)

References
Althusser, L. (1970). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Monthly Review Press.
Bentham, J. (1791). Panopticon. In The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4, 172-3.
Baudrillard, J. (1981). Simulacra and Simulation. University of Michigan Press.
Foucault, M. (1975). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.
Gramsci, A. (1933). Selections from the Prison Notebooks. International Publishers.
Han B.-C. & Steuer D. (2022). Non-things : upheaval in the lifeworld (English). Polity.
McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw Hill.
Palahniuk, C. (1996). Fight Club. W. W. Norton & Company.
Weir, P. (Director). (1998). The Truman Show [Film]. Paramount Pictures.