Do you own your own face?

If we don’t own our own faces, then others can use them for whatever purposes they choose, not just governments or businesses, but also private individuals. The destiny of so-called surveillance capitalism is to put everyone’s face and thus identity up for sale in ways that subject people to increasing manipulation and even physical danger.

The global village and the surveillance society

The global village has many similarities to an actual village or small town. Fellow villagers and small town neighbors are much more likely to know about each other’s personal lives (often including many of the intimate details) than those who live in a large city. As McLuhan wrote in 1962: “unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence.”