Recap
This episode focuses on a mother’s and daughter’s relationship over many years as informed by Arkangel, a GPS-tracking, real-time-vitals-indicating, memory and optical-viewing, and selective-filtering technology (touching on multiple data gathering technologies listed by Stanley and Steinhardt) that the mother had implanted into her child after losing her in a park. The daughter appears in three different ages: as a young child, a pre-teen, and a fifteen year old.
Reflection
I quite enjoyed this episode, but I imagine it would be much tougher for a parent to watch. The mom completely abused the technology, from observing her daughter’s therapy session to sneakily feeding her emergency contraception pills without consent. At the same time, immediately after turning off Arkangel, a boy at school introduces her pre-teen daughter, no longer “the Walking Snitch,” to anal pornography and a terrorist beheading video. The same boy later gives teenager her coke and a baby (or fertilized embryo), realizing what I assume are most parent’s worst fears for their teens: half of a teenage pregnancy and addicted to drugs (though addicted may be a little strong of a word).
I think the central message of Arkangel is not to avoid problems, which is perfectly exemplified by the content filtering.
The content filtering only obfuscates stressors. When the pre-teen daughter was freed from Arkangel, a barking dog that she could see and hear for the first time caused her to run into traffic, almost getting hit. But the teen-aged daughter had befriended the dog. This is later exemplified when the daughter is attacking her mother. With the content filtering enabled, she’s unable to see the damage she’s inflicted until the Arkangel tablet fizzles out.
Surveillance
The line between spying and safety is very fine. No one thinks twice about a baby monitor. Some might pause at the thought of an indoor security camera, branded “nanny cams,” of which there’s no shortage. Even still over 26 million people are on Life360, a GPS phone tracker with other features, so pregnancy and narcatoric indicators aside, Arkangel is basically here, though dispersed throughout different tech.
What I wanted to see more of was Face Seekers. The ability to search for people through a photograph is really enticing. I’ve photobombed hundreds if not more vacation photos, intentionally or not, and it would be so cool to see how many far pictures of me exist across the world.
Discussion question
Where do you draw the line between respecting privacy while protecting your children?
