The inevitability of the transition from a surveillance-society to a veillance-society: Moral and economic grounding for sousveillance

Surveillance is a French word that means “to watch from above” (e.g. guards watching prisoners, police watching citizens, etc.). Another form of veillance (watching) is sousveillance, which means “to watch from below”. Whereas surveillance often means cameras on large entities (e.g. buildings and land), sousveillance often means cameras on small entities (e.g. individual people). The importance of sousveillance has come to the forefront recently with advancements in wearable computing and AR (augmented or augmediated reality). We characterize sousveillance from both an economic and moral perspective. We argue that societies that reject sousveil-lance will be impoverished, relative to those accepting sousveil-lance. We further argue that sousveillance as a form of social action has positive survival characteristics, so that in the long run, assuming that social and technological trends continue, the widespread adoption of sousveillance is inevitable.