Today, March 9th 2010 I participated in an interactive workshop at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto titled Surveillance and Civic Action. Organized by Andrew Clement and Kate Milberry of The New Transparency Project, the purpose of the event was to bring together as many different perspectives as possible regarding the rise of surveillance in our society.

Each participant in the workshop offered some sort of presentation or demo that showcased their work or thoughts on the broader subject of surveillance.

However surveillance was really just a thread that connected other topics, and not the primary focus of the day long discussion. Instead surveillance was used as a segue to all sorts of spheres that relate to how our society is transforming in this age of the Internet.

In the same way that environmentalism has helped us become aware of our symbiotic relationship with the environment, perhaps something similar is required to help us understand our symbiotic relationship with cyberspace.