On my work and research

Überveillance or excessive surveillance is an inherent characteristic of robonomics. Überveillance is required to achieve maximum efficiency of the robonomic economic and social systems … Überveillance raises significant ethical issues related to privacy and behavioural control. Stanislav Ivanov and Craig Webster, “Future Tourism in a Robonomic World”, 2024.

Let us then employ Irenaeus’ own technique, but more broadly for more complete coverage of the Biblical data. If 666 is meant to be an allusion back to a number (or numbers) found in the earlier Scriptures, then the following suggestions, conveniently summarized in M.G. Michael’s article on 666 in the Old Testament, are [the] most common. Dr. Zachary Harris, “Forward and Reverse Gematria are Very Different Beasts”, Open Theology, Vol. 10, 2024.

I see from your papers that you really are amongst, if not the world expert on the 666 puzzle. Superb papers. Dean Rickles, Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, University of Sydney, 2024.

Bringing another aspect into play [changing notions of surveillance], the concept of “Überveillance” was recently introduced by M. G. Michael, echoing Nietzsche’s notion of “Übermensch”, to define bodily invasive surveillance (such as implants) which goes beyond and above the possibilities of previous surveillance tools. Eds. Marko Pajević  and Raili Marling, “Care, Control and Covid-19: Health and Biopolitics in Philosophy and Literature”, 2023.

Michael, your Uberveillance work reminds me of that great, but oddly unknown, E.M. Forster story, The Machine Stops (1909). Dean Rickles, Professor of History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, University of Sydney, 2023.

Several methods were used to unravel the mystery [666], albeit with such unsatisfactory results that the theologian Irenaeus of Lyon, archbishop during the second century CE, counselled waiting for the solution only when the Apocalypse is fulfilled. According to Michael [MG] the dominant method is gematria, a system of assigning numerical values to the letter of the Hebrew and Greek alphabets, a method that gives numerical values to words… [a]s far as 666 is concerned, as Michael and Bodner point out, there is no procedure that tries to solve this mystery by resorting to triangular numbers. Pedro Carvajal, “Reckoning the Number of the Beast – A New Approach,” Rose+Croix Journal, Vol. 16, (2022), 2022.

Drawing from his theological and academic studies as well as the traditions and cultures peculiar to Cyprus, they are narratives [Antipodes Issue 64, 2018] akin to those told as ancient and religious stories. Michael’s writing is magical and transcendent. Angela Costi, “Lost in Mid-Verse” (2014), “An Embroidery of Old Maps and New” (2021), 2022.

Having recently rediscovered the joy of Michael’s ‘Short Stories Off the Wing,’ (Southerly, 70(1), 2010). I have to say not only is Michael one of my favourite writers, with his wit, and compassion and subterranean understanding of all things spiritual, he is also one of my favourite people. His empathy with suffering, and the wisdom that arises from that allowance of light coming from darkness and filling the heart with hope, makes Michael a remarkable man, and a wonderful teacher. Christine Paice, University of Wollongong's inaugural Janet Cosh Poet (2010), 2022.

Michael, you have an absolute gift to be able to translate your wisdom into words of comfort during such turbulent times. Professor Eusebio Scornavacca, School for the Future of Innovation in Society and Thunderbird School of Global Management, Arizona State University, 2022.

Überveillance ... is the morphological excellence of Bentham’s Panopticon. The effect is pure Foucault, discipline and punish: and we do submit. Babette Babich, “Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology: From Phenomenology to Critical Theory”, 2021.

Your concept of Überveillance as the embedding of algorithmically controlled, AI-enhanced devices into the human body itself formulates perhaps the ultimate, palpable stage of the cyberworld’s incursion into the physical world, with the human body itself thus becoming the most intimate site for surveillance and control of life-movements. Dr. Michael Eldred, Cologne, Germany, 2021.

The surveillance powers one obtains from effectively extending the capabilities of the body itself in daily life, as the Augmented Reality tools of proposed Metaverse technology would require (think AR glasses that record in the background), has been termed Uberveillance by the historian Dr. M. G. Michael: a form of surveillance that, because it involves a select few ‘transcending’ their natural abilities in a way that leaves the vast majority vulnerable in individual interactions, brings to mind Nietzsche’s “ubermensch”, empowered to wield power that others are too ‘limited’ to wield. Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh, Founder at Pivot For Humanity, 2021.

What a gifted writer you are, and your generous references to others across the spectrum of doctrines is remarkably far-reaching and even surprising. J. Mitchell Johnson, Director Olympic Overture (1980), Yanks for Stalin (1999), World Without Waves (2004), Saving North (2020), 2021.

I recently read your reflection on writing as carving and the difficulty in avoiding caricature. Despite (or perhaps even because of) its brevity, the reflection is so multilayered. It reminds me a little of Walter Benjamin—not in terms of content. Rather, what reminds me of Benjamin is the probing ability to capture so many levels and layers to experience, to address the need to heal alongside the need to keep in check certain tendencies. I was struck by the meditation both in terms of the depth of thought as well as the power of its poetry. Dr. Aleksandr Andreas Wansbrough, Editor for The Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture, 2021.

Your beautiful writing, Michael, has a Dostoyevskyesque mood to it, redolent of relentless self-questioning. You pack so much wisdom into it! Dr. Michael Eldred, Cologne, Germany, 2021.

Uberveillance is a rich construct, which has several characteristics and hence is capable of multiple interpretations. Professor Roger Clarke, Australian National University, “A Dataveillance Retrospective: 1986-2021”.

Michael G. Michael is one of the most engaged, engaging, and committed research students I have had the privilege of meeting. He was proficient in his topic and I learned a great deal from our interactions. Professor Pauline Allen, FAHA, FBA, 2020.

I know no one who writes more beautifully about what makes us human, than my friend MG. I've posted this [To behold the face of the other] on my social media, because it's not only timeless, but oh! so timely. Thank you MG. Joseph Carvalko, Jr., J.D., Chair the Technology and Ethics Working Group, Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, Yale University, 2020.

Every visit with Michael is a journey through lightness, darkness and back to the light. I wouldn’t have it any other way. From the lecture theatres of Wollongong University to the Thai Burma Border refugee camps and study centres with classrooms which had no walls but still the relentless light and spirit flooded in. Some advice to the readers of this vitae: be prepared for his paradoxical tender bear hug upon greeting and goodbye. To know Michael is to have been ‘embraced tenderly’. Dr. Jason Sargent, 2020.

To read the poems of M.G. Michael is to taste a rich, layered sweet, like an edible palimpsest, at the table of the poor, in the presence of angels, sinners and saints. It is as if the Vitae Patrum have been overlaid with Der  Himmel über Berlin, soaked in Metaxa, and served with strong black coffee. These poems are prayers which pray for their reader as they are prayed in turn by her. They offer up a fallen world to the mercy of God, and weep in the brightness of its redemption. They are among the most beautiful revelations in contemporary Australian literature. Dr. Stephen McInerney, 2020.

…[a]nd there are angels — angels and demonic glimpses — in the work of my dear friend and troubled visionary M.G. Michael, who writes, as it happens… Associate Professor David G. Brooks, 2020.

It [new industrial digital age machine] announces itself as Society 5.0 that might become an “uberveillance” (M.G. Michael) society if politics, trade unions, academia, and the media do not question the theoretical and practical ambitions of “computer power” over “human reason” (Joseph Weizenbaum). Professor Rafael Capurro, International Center for Information Ethics, ICIE, Stuttgart, Germany, 2020.

I met Dr. Michael as an undergraduate student in 2005, and was instantly enthralled by his teaching style and philosophy. He commanded the lecture theatre with his strong presence, which was characterised by a mix of expertise, depth of knowledge, and an incredible degree of empathy. Since this time, I have been fortunate enough to be supervised throughout my PhD candidature by this outstanding scholar, mentor, teacher and human being. Dr. Roba Abbas, 2019.

MG is one of the deepest thinkers I know. Just saying. John C. Havens, Executive Director of the IEEE Global Initiative for Ethical Considerations in Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems, 2019.

These [short stories] are too much for me. They delight, intrigue, have one shaking one’s head - they are, above all, little flashes of sparkling snow drops, lying on leaves at dawn, waiting for the passing perceptive observer. Dr. Nicholas Kyriacos, 2017.

Whether employing aphorism, verse or, as in this collection, a series of prose-poems, Michael gives expression to the vision Lorenzatos called for by drawing upon (to name just two prominent sources) the spiritual classics of Orthodox Christianity as well as the magical realism of the post-WWII Greek poet Tasos Leivaditis. N.N. Trakakis, Introduction to M.G. Michael’s, Keepers of a Great Memory, 2015.

For those interested in going deeper into the Old Testament uses of 666 there is an excellent scholarly article by M. G. Michael, “Observations on 666 in the Old Testament,” Bulletin of Biblical Studies 18 (January to June 1999): 33-39. Jon Paulien, Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Andrews University, 2014.

M.G.Michael's... more recent uberveillance serve[s] as an important milestone in awareness of the growing threat of our instrumented world. Colonel Lisa Shay, Cyber Research Centre of the United States Military Academy, West Point, 2014.

The seminal work of M.G. Michael… define[s] the concept of Uberveillance as embedded surveillance… Professor Steve Mann, 2014.

“More generally, over the past 50 years or so, we've been moving toward a “Surveillance Society” [Lyon 2001], but now we are beginning to see other Veillances, not just Surveillance! Examples include Sousveillance, also known as Inverse-Surveillance [Mann 2002], Equiveillance (ratio of surveillance to sousveillance, also known as Omniveillance [Bailey and Kerr 2007]), Dataveillance [Clarke 1988], and Uberveillance [Michael et. al., 2006].” Marvin Minsky, Ray Kurzweil, and Steve Mann, “The Society of Intelligent Veillance”, ISTAS13, 2013.

It [Westerly 58.1, 2012] contains some excellent pieces… to a delightful and Vonnegut-esque series of narrative vignettes by M.G. Michael. Pelican, Edition 6, Vol. 84, 2013.

M.G. Michael’s poems [also] come from another way of being: their epigrammatic and semantically charged verses construct a new gaze over human homelessness through the perspective of eternity. Professor Vrasidas Karalis, Mascara Literary Review, Issue 12, November, 2012.

Uberveillance noun. an omnipresent electronic surveillance facilitated by technology that makes it possible to embed surveillance devices in the human body. Also, überveillance. Fifth Edition of the Macquarie Dictionary (Australia's National Dictionary), 2009.

Mere surveillance is passé. The idea was worth discussing as recently as a quarter-century ago, but no longer. Technologists have delivered, and marketers have promoted (and exaggerated), a host of additional capabilities. A new term that might better describe the current circumstances is ‘uberveillance’. Professor Roger Clarke, Australian National University, 2007.

Undoubtedly the best part of the process [Karen refugee tertiary education program at the Thai-Burma border], however, was the contribution made by Dr. Michael G. Michael, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Wollongong in Australia. Dr. Michael offered his time and expertise to visit the students for a period of four weeks, serving as a tutor and mentor to guide the students in their studies. This direct human contact and face-to-face interaction was a tremendous support to students and, I would say, a highlight of the whole experience. Dr. Terry A. Veling, Australian Catholic University and Refugee Tertiary Education Committee (RTEC), March 2007.

Your students and colleagues have shown their appreciation for your teaching by nominating you for a 2006 University of Wollongong, Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning (OCTAL) Award. What high praise for your classroom activities. You are so clearly valued by your students and fellow teachers. Associate Professor Rebecca Albury, University of Wollongong, 2005.

I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Dr. Michael G. Michael who kindly read the text and offered many helpful suggestions… re. “John: The Shepherd King”. Bishop Paul Barnett, 2005.

The thesis [PhD] makes a substantial contribution to theological science, and in particular to the study of the reception of the Apocalypse of St. John within the New Testament Canon, because of its originality, depth and excellent use of patristic sources. Professor Anestis Keselopoulos, 2003.

The candidate’s ability to advance knowledge is also apparent, evidenced especially by his thorough handling of relevant early Christian sources in effectively arguing that the Apocalypse is implicitly discernible in the writings of early first-century Christians. Professor Nicolae Roddy, 2002.

It is with great pleasure that I send this letter of your acceptance to participate in the Millennium Conference on the Sea of Galilee and the City of Jerusalem, sponsored by the Consortium of the Bethsaida Excavations Project at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the Maurice Greenberg Centre for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford, and the Shrine of the Book, Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Coordinator, Consortium of the Bethsaida Excavations Project, Wendi S. Chiarbos, 1999.

Your thesis [The Number of the Beast, 666, Revelation 13:16-18… ] deals with a subject that today, when the thoughts of many turning to the beginning of a new millennium, perplexes the average reader of the Scriptures… Professor Emeritus Bruce M. Metzger, Princeton Theological Seminary, 1998.

Michael has excellent knowledge of the field… the wholeness of the treatise on the Apocalypse, the scientific methodology, and the offering of a compact presentation of the problems and possibilities of the book are tied up with his ability as a writer. Professor Emeritus Savvas Agouridis, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 1998.

Michael is to be congratulated on a remarkably exhaustive study of a complex subject… In short, this thesis stands as a monument to a high intellect and considerable thoroughness… [he] has done what few could do. He has mastered western scholars of all “stripes”. Right Rev. Dr. Paul Barnett, 1998.

The Academic Senate… joins myself in commending you for the high quality of your work and thanking you for the credit you have brought to the University. Macquarie University, Dean of Graduate Studies, 1998.

The poetry of Michael G. Michael is characterised from the start by a rare sensitivity towards humanity but also to his Creator, and from within an ethereal lyricism… a humble hymnologist he submits his important voice to present to us another dimension of that space which we all turn to during our moments of solitariness… Yiannis Liaskos, Poetic Hours, 1998.

I am delighted to tell you that you have won the New Poets Award for this year. Congratulations! Alison White, The Australian Anthology of New Poets, 1995.

The writings of Michael G. Michael are poems of the heart and soul. One moment he sores exultantly in the heights of the Infinite, and then swoops down to probe the qualities, the foibles and the quintessential nature of humanity, bringing understanding and faith into a questing world. Professor Emeritus George Kanarakis OAM, 1994.

M.G. Michael’s poetry is as enigmatic and surprising as the man himself. Alison White, The Australian Anthology of New Poets, 1992.

Mr Michael made as powerful and positive an impact on the pupils as I have ever seen in my teaching life. Mr. Nicholas Kyriacos, Headmaster of Saint Spyridon College, 1992.

Michael was outstanding in his keeness and industry, by which he actualised to the full his considerable natural abilities. Rev. Dr. David M. Coffey, 1991.

Michael's essays reflected research, intellectual analytical skills of the highest order. Br. Dr. Themistocles Adamopoulo, 1991.

It would be no exaggeration to say that in all my years of service at the University you were my finest student. We hold the best impressions of your stay here with us at Thessaloniki. Professor Emeritus Nikos Zacharopoulos, Dean, School of Theology, Aristotelian University, 1988.

In reference to the above document we wish to make it known [to the Consulate General of Greece in Sydney] that the granting of a scholarship has been awarded to Mr. Michael George Michael… to study theology at the University of Thessaloniki [the Aristotelian]. Greek Government, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Athens, 1984.

Michael Michael leaves the school with the highest recommendation to any employer. He has an enthusiasm and tenacity for everything he does, whether on the sporting field or in academic study. Michael's charm of personality and limitless energy has won him the admiration of his peers and staff. Mr. P. Feenan, Principal, Kingsgrove North High School (KNHS), 1979.

It is in the sporting field that the basis of Michael's character becomes more apparent. As his Rugby League coach I am aware of his dedication and cooperation with coach and teammates. Michael Michael is a fierce competitor. He hates the thought of defeat. Michael can be recommended highly but more so for the fact that he is a complete gentleman. Mr. Michael Burns, First Grade Rugby League Coach, Kingsgrove North High School (KNHS), 1979.