Reading a few random news stories whilst kept awake... leads to some thoughts...
ever since 1984 came out, people have said that various countries have become Orwellian states - east Germany, with its Stasi informers
Uk, with (at the time) the most CCTVs
And any number if dictatorships , North Korea, enumerable South American, African and Middle East countries.
1984 had 2-way televisions, you could be watched at all times, but you didn’t know if you were, so your behaviour was modelled in the belief that you were. Similar to a panopticon prison. Free thought was effectively restricted by proxy and fear that whatever you did was seen and recorded.
so, Orwell foretold the mass surveillance and censorship.
Everybody is now monitored:
your location:
Mobile phones, you’re placed within a few metres every few seconds (or less).
CCTVs proliferate, whether it be a govt, council, business or personal ones.
Your thoughts:
Internet usage, browsers, apps etc - all recording what you do.
AI assistants (Alexa etc) always listening and recording you.
Your free thoughts and thinking:
A walled garden of selective information (eg the great firewall of China).
A mass of disinformation (eg ‘fake news’, ‘echo chambers’, religion and other mindsets)
Your details:
Anything you put anywhere or anyhow on the internet or send via a device, is obtainable. Once obtainable (by public access or ‘hacking’), it can be collated...
The whole (connected) world, not just a state, is now in 1984.
maybe the quote from ‘the prisoner’ is what I’d like to be true - I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own! - but I know the hypocrisy of that thought , as I type on an Mobile...
or my own hypocrisy of watching films like ‘enemy of the state’ and ‘Snowden’ and inwardly going ‘that’s life now, really bad, how could it come to this’ ... and doing nothing.
/end
ever since 1984 came out, people have said that various countries have become Orwellian states - east Germany, with its Stasi informers
Uk, with (at the time) the most CCTVs
And any number if dictatorships , North Korea, enumerable South American, African and Middle East countries.
1984 had 2-way televisions, you could be watched at all times, but you didn’t know if you were, so your behaviour was modelled in the belief that you were. Similar to a panopticon prison. Free thought was effectively restricted by proxy and fear that whatever you did was seen and recorded.
so, Orwell foretold the mass surveillance and censorship.
Everybody is now monitored:
your location:
Mobile phones, you’re placed within a few metres every few seconds (or less).
CCTVs proliferate, whether it be a govt, council, business or personal ones.
Your thoughts:
Internet usage, browsers, apps etc - all recording what you do.
AI assistants (Alexa etc) always listening and recording you.
Your free thoughts and thinking:
A walled garden of selective information (eg the great firewall of China).
A mass of disinformation (eg ‘fake news’, ‘echo chambers’, religion and other mindsets)
Your details:
Anything you put anywhere or anyhow on the internet or send via a device, is obtainable. Once obtainable (by public access or ‘hacking’), it can be collated...
The whole (connected) world, not just a state, is now in 1984.
maybe the quote from ‘the prisoner’ is what I’d like to be true - I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own! - but I know the hypocrisy of that thought , as I type on an Mobile...
or my own hypocrisy of watching films like ‘enemy of the state’ and ‘Snowden’ and inwardly going ‘that’s life now, really bad, how could it come to this’ ... and doing nothing.
/end
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