…and potentially dangerous / 1984... (2015)
…and potentially dangerous / 1984... (2015)
“…so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinised.”
George ORWELL, “1984”
Living in big cities, people have become the objects of constant surveillance — cameras are nstalled at train stations, in the streets, on subway platforms, in stores, at ATMs and gas stations, on doors and in entrance halls.
In 1949, George Orwell published his novel "1984", in which he describes a future where every human action is monitored with video cameras.
Today in London, the average person is captured by surveillance cameras approximately seventy times a day. Cameras track your comings and goings. Telecom operators monitor the location of mobile phones (and hence their respective owners). Banks know in which stores we’re making purchases with their cards, in which hotels we’re staying, and in which restaurants we’re eating dinner. Google monitors the websites we’re visiting. Social networks know our friends, know what kind of music we’re listening to, and what movies we are watching. Photos of our children, families, and colleagues are posted on Facebook, vacation and party videos are on YouTube, and our breakfasts are on Instagram.
We don’t notice the cameras. Giving our tacit consent to the continuous gaze of Big Brother, we stop seeing them, like the Native Americans who ignored the ships of the Conquistadors, excluding them from their reality. We have agreed to let them invisibly watch our lives, justifying their presence and their right to observe, as if suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
By the way, you are being shot right now.
George ORWELL, “1984”
Living in big cities, people have become the objects of constant surveillance — cameras are nstalled at train stations, in the streets, on subway platforms, in stores, at ATMs and gas stations, on doors and in entrance halls.
In 1949, George Orwell published his novel "1984", in which he describes a future where every human action is monitored with video cameras.
Today in London, the average person is captured by surveillance cameras approximately seventy times a day. Cameras track your comings and goings. Telecom operators monitor the location of mobile phones (and hence their respective owners). Banks know in which stores we’re making purchases with their cards, in which hotels we’re staying, and in which restaurants we’re eating dinner. Google monitors the websites we’re visiting. Social networks know our friends, know what kind of music we’re listening to, and what movies we are watching. Photos of our children, families, and colleagues are posted on Facebook, vacation and party videos are on YouTube, and our breakfasts are on Instagram.
We don’t notice the cameras. Giving our tacit consent to the continuous gaze of Big Brother, we stop seeing them, like the Native Americans who ignored the ships of the Conquistadors, excluding them from their reality. We have agreed to let them invisibly watch our lives, justifying their presence and their right to observe, as if suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
By the way, you are being shot right now.
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