Wearables and sur(Over)-veillance, sous(under)-veillance, co(so)-veillance, and metaveillance (veillance of veillance) for health and well-being

Abstract

At the University of Toronto, we’re embarking on a bold new initiative to bring together these four disciplines: law, business, engineering, and medicine, through what we call “sousveillant systems”—grassroots systems of “bottom up” facilitation of cross-, trans-, inter-, meta-, and anti-disciplinarity, or, more importantly, cross-, trans-, and inter-passionary efforts. Passion is a better master than discipline (to paraphrase Albert Einstein’s “Love is a better master than duty”). Our aim is not to eliminate “big science,” “big data,” and “big watching” (surveillance), but to complement these things with a balancing force. There will still be “ladder climbers,” but we aim to balance these entities and individuals with those who embody the “integrity of authenticity” and to provide a complete picture that is otherwise a half-truth when only the “big” end is present. This generalizes the notion of “open source,” where each instance of a system (e.g., computer operating system) contains or can contain its own seeds (e.g., source code). Sousveillant systems are an alternative to the otherwise sterile world of closed-source, specialist silos that are not auditable by end-users (i.e., are only auditable by authorities from “above”).