Secrecy and surveillance – the future of family life

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jun/06/secrecy-surveillance-future-family-life

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What is the future for the family? Because the families we live in now are in many ways unrecognisable from the one I grew up in. This stems partly from a change in values and social structures – the changing role of women, the softening of parents' attitudes towards children, the increasing number of "melded" families, such as my own. But above all it is technology that is going to determine how we live as families in the future.

I have written before about what I felt to be the effect of screens on the household – everyone retreating into their own private spaces rather than being part of a greater whole. But I suspect that this is only the beginning.

I recently received a press release suggesting that I might want to take advantage of an app that would tell me exactly where my children were at any time via their mobile phones. There have been experiments with cameras in classrooms where classes could be streamed for parents to watch their children from home. Most recently, there is wearable technology – ordinary-looking eyeglasses that can record everything they witness.

I once wrote a book about a man who set up video cameras throughout his house to find out exactly what his family was up to when he wasn't around. He ended up being flayed by a psychotic female techno nerd. The Seymour Tapes was meant as a warning about a future that is fast becoming the present.

My inspiration for the book came from frustration about the conversations I had with my family about differing versions of the same events. It was claimed I said something that I believed I had not. Or I was sure my wife had made some promise that she denied making. Or I had told my children to do something that they swore I had not. Recording technology would make that all a thing of the past. Your whole life, and that of your family, could be digitised.

Yet there is such a thing as too much information, too much truth if you like – particularly when it comes to our nearest and dearest. Alex Seymour, the protagonist in The Seymour Tapes, starts with the idea of verification but switches quite quickly to observation. He secretly records what his family do and say while he's not there. He finds out that his wife and children don't particularly like him – that his fantasy of who he is as a father is very much at odds with the person he is perceived to be. And this, surely, is the real danger of a world of technology where nothing is hidden any more – where every house is the Big Brother house. It leaves no room for fantasy – self-protective or otherwise.

The truth about your family may be that they love you – but they also, from time to time, hate you or think you're an idiot, or don't trust you, or can't be bothered with you. And they lie – just as you do. At the moment, most of these truths can be kept within the realm of the private – within the head or inside private conversations. As these become eroded, one of two things will happen – either we will become paranoid and censor everything we say, or our sensitivities will be trampled on leading to a whole new era of conflict.

The threat to our privacy is no longer only from outside our homes. The forward march of recording technologies are now so advanced that it is just too easy to have listening walls, doors that watch. Wearable technologies are just the start.

As for me, I am happy for ignorance to remain bliss. I can keep my illusions aloft – that I am universally loved and respected and that my version of events is always the right one. It may be wrong – but as TS Eliot observed, man can only bear so much reality. And for fathers, that's doubly the case.

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