‘Big Brother!’ This is the most common reaction from people who hear or read about Wizi for the very first time. I’ve seen it in many forums and blogs, I’ve heard it from friends and unknown people I’ve talked to. "Big Brother!" they say "that means my boss or my wife may track me at any time. There will be no peace from now on…" Most of these comments are made in a funny tone but there’s always some truth in it. People are concerned with their privacy.  

The concept of Big Brother, raised in George Orwell’s novel, is related with another concept investigated by the French philosopher Michel Foucault: the Panoptic. In his book Discipline and Punish, Foucault analyzed the Panopticon, a prison that was structured in a way that all cells would be opened to a central tower. Prisoners could never know whether they were being watched or not, but they knew someone could be watching them at any moment. This uncertainty, this constant possibility of being watched (pan=all; optic=seeing) would make prisoners more docile and self-controlled.

George Orwell used this concept to describe an authoritarian society where all citizens were "good citizens". In every home, in every working place, there was the telescreen (a mashup between a television set and a security camera) which could never be switched off. At any moment, anywhere, big brother could be watching so every citizen had to behave.

The idea of having all your friends and colleagues controlling your steps is, in fact, frightening. We all need our space, our privacy. The other day I was demoing Wizi to a couple, and the husband told me instantly: ‘Big Brother!’ And then he said: ‘Listen, I don’t mind if my wife knows where I am… as long as I’m home. But I don’t want her to spy on me’. The wife replied: ‘I don’t want to know what he’s doing when he’s away. And I don’t want him to know where I am. He’s too jealous’. And then they kissed and laughed at it. Then I explained that Wizi in not about controlling, but about sharing information. I mean, you just tell what you want to tell: you can set yourself invisible or, as in life, you can always lie about your whereabouts. They enjoyed the idea. And this is the big difference between Wizi and any panoptic device: you decide when someone can be watching you, you decide who can watch you and for how long. You define what that person  will see when watching you. Wizi is a social application, not a surveillance device.