Each Thursday we bring you great, new, potential additions to your high-tech, low-life arsenal! We always help answer the question, How do I find the latest in cyberpunk gear?
Avoiding Facial Detection…
This week we are talking about gear for avoiding detection. So let’s get straight down to it. We live in a world increasingly under surveillance. Whether it be the government, Facebook, Amazon, or the neighbor and her drone, everyone is watching us. So how do we learn to go undetected?
Do I need to dress head to toe in camouflage? Do I need an ugly shirt? Or maybe just an ugly sticker? Either way, many thanks to the man, the myth, and the legend… William Gibson!
As always, we offer three unique opportunities to explore new cyber-fuel for our lives in cyberpunk’d gear:
As the choice of anonymity and privacy are deeply held values in those longing for a free society, surveillance is the enemy. To avoid the digital surveillance of the 21st century and beyond, there is an argument to be made for the opportunities found in memes (#CommissionsEarned) and other camouflaging techniques.
William Gibson’s Zero History (#CommissionsEarned) first illustrated the opportunity in fiction with his “ugly shirt.” Gibson describes it thusly, “Because their architecture tells them to forget it, and anyone who’s wearing it as well. They forget the figure wearing the ugly T-shirt. Forget the head atop it, the legs below, feet, arms, hands. It compels erasure.”
But is this really possible? Some have thought so and many have come and gone in the attempt to produce such a unique garment. In 2013, both Wired and The Atlantic ran articles discussing the opportunities highlighting the “glamoflauge” shirts then being designed. A “current” depiction offered the purblind graphics of Michael Jackson and Barrack Obama.
In 2018, William Gibson was back referencing the issue again. This time with a remark about a TechCrunch post on a new tool. In the article, the author introduced stickers that have the same effect as the proposed “ugly shirt.” They went so far as to illustrate how a banana is perceived to be a toaster with the use of these stickers. This is a must check out item!
In 2020, the shirts themselves have been updated to deal with the issue of recognition on moving fabric. Wired again provided more insight.
Each advance in gear has brought us closer to actully having the choice of whether or not we choose to remain anonymous and thus protect and maintain our privacy. So the choice is ours? Will we dress up, or sticker up, to blend in and fade away?
We just love to share the coolest gear out there to cyberize and self-make our worlds, so to those ends we thank you! Come back soon and to find more out on Cyber-Gear follow this link!