In 1667, Paris installed streetlights. Lanterns on the corners, lit at dusk.

It was a policing measure. Light made crime harder. It also changed the city: people went out at night, commerce moved later, the streets became a place. Nobody could have predicted the second part.

Every layer of watching since has worked the same way.

What's the pattern?

Surveillance always starts with a real problem. Fire watchmen. Streetlights. Traffic cameras. Then disease tracking. Then terrorism. Each layer is added for a reason nobody can argue with, and each stays after the reason fades, and finds new work.

The layer being added now is different in one respect: it remembers. A watchman forgot your face. A camera with facial recognition and a database doesn't. A city that can see everything and store it is a city that can answer, years later, where you were on a Tuesday.

I've spent years thinking about perception and security. What I'd say to any mayor is this: the danger isn't the seeing. Cities have always been watched. The danger is the memory, and who gets to query it, and for what.

The passport, which I've written about elsewhere, was invented for wartime security and became the instrument of immigration control within a decade. Proof layers never stay narrow. Neither do cameras.

What should leaders do now?

So, three things, if you run anything public.

Set the memory before the camera. How long is data kept? Who can search it? For what? Decide in law, in advance, not in a crisis.

Separate seeing from identifying. A camera that counts cars is a different tool from one that names drivers. Treat them differently, and say so.

And make the watching visible. A city that hides its sensors is asking to be distrusted. One that publishes what it collects and why is building the thing surveillance usually destroys, which is consent.

Paris got safer streets and a nightlife it didn't plan. Your city will get something it didn't plan too. Decide what it's allowed to remember before it starts.

What does your city remember about you, and who's allowed to ask?

Related: Will you have to prove you're human online?

Sources
  1. Sam Rad, "Will you have to prove you're human online?" sam-rad.com/writing, on proof layers.
  2. Holly Tucker, "How Paris Became the City of Light," Lapham's Quarterly, 2017, from City of Light, City of Poison (2017), on La Reynie's lanterns from 1667.

Sam Rad, The Change Futurist. Keynote speaker on change, transformation, resilience, and AI adoption. Author of Radical Next. Book a keynote