While finishing The Circle an article came up on one of the many car pages I follow. A company called Reviver Auto has released a new product at the Detroit Autoshow. The product is currently only available for use in California and Arizona. The company’s website outlines the benefits as follows: “The Rplate Pro transforms the 125-year-old stamped metal vehicle license plate into a cool-looking, multi-functional digital display, and connected vehicle platform, delivering multiple efficiencies to businesses, government agencies and consumers.” However, when reading articles that outline the application of such a device and reading between the lines on the companies website, I quickly began to be reminded of The Circle. Much like Francis’ ChildTrack in which we can see the good in such a system, but we quickly realize the horrific implications. The product brags about the ability to create geofenced areas in which a car is allowed to drive, and if the driver passes such regions, the plate will change to inform drivers and the authorities.
Constant monitoring leads to more serious implications like shown in The Circle. The cost of the product goes back to the consumer, giving the consumer a false-sense of hassle-free registration. However, the potential is disturbing, what if your plate can warn people around you of things that previously wouldn’t be known, such as criminal records or other such stigmatizing announcements. I’ll plant a naysayer, “well wouldn’t this make our driving safer? Knowing where past criminals may be or violators?” On the simplistic level, yes. However, this is a form of public shaming that has been largely shown to be ineffective. Looking back at Goffman’s theory on stigma we can glean that this type of public shaming (which in turn creates stigma) is not beneficial to both the person receiving the stigma and the person/s projecting that stigma onto another. First: it dehumanizes the person receiving the stigma, may that be a positive or negative sanction; for example, someone with a disability has a stigma, but our society often gives sympathy to such a person. Then we have negative stigmas, like the process that some sex offenders must obey when they relocate to a new home. This is a negative sanctioned stigma. This stigma then degrades the person, positively or negatively. Goffman states: “Among his own, the stigmatized individual can use his disadvantage as a basis for organizing life, but he must resign himself to a half-world to do so” (Goffman 21). Goffman continues by saying these in the stigmatized group feel ostracized and then band together in a subset of the population. They become self-actualized versions of their stigma. Therefore a sex offender can never leave the societal role they play as a sex offender, much like a person with a DUI plate can never leave their role as an alcoholic. Rather than rehabilitation, we see stigmatization that pushes these individuals further to the margins of society. So what if you had a license plate that can change without your knowledge, what if adapts into something “smarter” maybe after so many times speeding or crashes, your plate will label you as a reckless driver. Perhaps, you will start to see yourself how you believe society sees you and through living in a half-world as Goffman says, never find yourself a member of the greater community. The Rplate Pro seems like a great idea, but with wrong application could have monumental effects. Much like The Circle, we see how being over connected can breed deeper issues than the ones we are attempting to solve. Relating back to ChildTrack, this license plate system could be used to track and maintain a child, what if that child is attempting to escape a harmful or abusive situation, with geofencing the child could have greater challenges when trying to leave. Perhaps I am wrong; I hope this technology will be used for good. However, on the surface level, the system appears to create more social issues than good. So I will end with a question, to what extent does our convenience and comfort outweigh our susceptibility to be watched or monitored? Does our comfort and ease justify such negative societal implications? I think I’ll be sticking with my metal plates.
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Dr. PolakWrangler of the attendant ne'er-do-wells. Archives
May 2018
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