Welcome to 1984

I was watching an interview this morning on C-Span from the National Constitution Center.  The interview was with Julie Angwin about her book, “Dragnet Nation” which is about how modern surveillance inhibits free speech, free association, and how the information we receive is custom tailored.  That’s right.  The content of articles you read online is revised according to your consumer and browser histories.

This waved my memory back to high school and the first time I read “1984” by George Orwell.  The novel pressed an ice-pack on my nerves.  The notion that something like that could happen obsessed me for the longest time.  The obsession led me to see the movie with John Hurt and Richard Burton, when it was released in 1984.  The big-screen TV’s that hung on the walls inside homes were thrillingly futuristic even thirty years ago.  I wondered if there would ever be such things.  The mind-numbing programs that people watched that were interrupted by “If you see something, say something” PSAs scared the daylights out of me. 

Still, it was like ghost stories, it tickled my spine in a fun way because I didn’t really believe it could ever happen.  I was certain that even if the technology developed, people would never so blithely accept Big Brother into their homes.
I was wrong, of course.  The technology has not only surpassed Orwell’s imagination, the depth to which we are tracked is deeper and tougher to escape.  Public acceptance was quicker and easier too.  Few object.  Most say, “I have nothing to hide.  Why do I care if the government and private corporations know what I’m doing all the time?”

We cheerfully carry tracking devices with us: cells phones and the GPS systems in our cars.  Most have at least two in our homes: personal computers and big-screen TV’s.  Every purchase we make, every bill we pay, every phone call we make, every doctor we see, every treatment we receive, every medication we take is recorded electronically.  (No the HIPAA act doesn’t prevent business or government from having access to these records.)  Surveillance cameras are everywhere: every business, every parking lot, most public intersections, and every mode of public transportation.

And, this doesn’t even touch the information we eagerly donate on endless social media applications like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Instagram, etc.

Even those who do care cooperate in this, because we’ve arranged our lives in a manner that we can’t function without these devices.  Even if you try to get off the grid a little, e.g., you decide to do your scholarship and research at your local public library.  Most of your activities there are processed on computers and tracked through your library card.  (Public libraries have been required to give that information, upon request, to Homeland Security since the passage of the Patriot Act during G.W. Bush’s administration.  This Act that was strengthened by President Obama.)

So, yes, 1984 is here, and it’s on steroids.  And, we don’t care.  How about that?