Satellite surveillance and the orbital unconscious

Abstract

Satellite data are frequently attached to discourses of infallibility, objectivity and omnipresence. Yet the value of satellite data in everyday society largely depends on the strength of our interpretations, interpretations which are easily misled. Satellite images can be fabricated, misread and restricted, yet companies like Google encourage users to see themselves as active agents in a collaborative process of accumulating data, obscuring users’ true relations with satellite technology and giving them a false sense of power and anonymity. In this sense, satellites constitute a new unconscious terrain of perception. For Geert Lovink, we have reached an age where we can ‘read satellites as metaphors, as a new type of technological mirror’ and as ‘an unconscious apparatus’. This article argues that our lack of conscious awareness around the presence, nature and infrastructure of satellites allows them to thrive under the radar as a new species of unconscious surveillance technology.