Data is all around us and we’re constantly looking for ways to join it together. The novel 1984 portrayed this dystopian vision of the future; a future characterised by double speak, thought crying and universal and constant surveillance. It warns about totalitarianism but in reality, does this have a real message for a contemporary audience? As the director Michael Futcher has made clear, when 1984 was played in theatres in 2012 the show sold out so this was an indication that there was an enormous desire from the audiences to understand the nature of this type of power and the way it related to our own society. It is now getting more and more difficult for people to escape surveillance.
Mark Pesce, a futurist and technology analyst and associate in USYD digital cultures program, explains that 1984 resonates with so many people as well as this idea of a surveillance society saying, “For 29 years after 1984 we really thought we’d dodged a bullet, that western democracies were safe, powerful and we were all living in freedom. Then last year when the Snowden revelations came out it started to become clearer and clearer that in fact 1984 wasn’t far off the mark: that the NSA and its associated organisations were all colluding in massive wide-scale surveillance of populations and specific targeted surveillance of world leaders” (Funnell 2014). The NSA (National Security Agency) has this capability and is using it to record everything. People are making this surveillance even easier by using smart phones that track their every move. Pesce believes that there are many benefits of connected culture; it is just up to people to discover how to control their own privacy and sharing. At present it is still difficult to do so in the market place but as this need to control privacy rises, cultural techniques will be established that allow better modulation of privacy.
Rob Hillard from Deloitte also sees our relationship with surveillance as extremely complex. “Yet at the heart of the surveillance society he says is data. Lots of Data. Big Data” (Funnell 2015). The debate around big data is nothing new, but as Hillard points out, trying to avoid being tracked online is now becoming suspicious. You are at risk of being responsible for a crime that happens while you are offline. He ultimately believes that living without leaving a trail is easy if you want to live as a hermit but even so, in The Bourne Supremacy protagonist Jason Bourne tries to escape the CIA by going off the grid in India, only to still miraculously be tracked there.
Being watched has become a part of life today. There are indeed safety benefits that come from constantly being watched e.g. by lifeguards. So even though people say they don’t like being watched, there are also times when they’d want to be watched. Funnily enough, people are comfortable being watched if they’ve given consent, but public surveillance cameras are recording us without our permission. In turn, surveillance has manifested into a one way mirror in which we are watched by cannot watch back.
REFERENCES
Brew, N. 2013, ‘Surveillance in society- global communications monitoring and data retention’, Parliament of Australia, viewed 23 August 2015, .
Brew, N. 2012, ‘Telecommunications data retention- an overview, Parliamentary Library, viewed 24 August 2015, .
Funnell, A. 2014, ‘1984 and our modern surveillance society’, Future Tense ABC, viewed 23 August 2015, .
Funnell, A. 2014, How far from 1984?, audio podcast, Future Tense, Radio National, ABC Radio, Sydney, 27 July, viewed 24 August 2015, .
Gans, J., Mann, S. 2015, ‘When the camera lies: our surveillance society needs a dose of integrity to be reliable’, The Conversation, viewed 20 August 2015, .
The Bourne Supremacy 2004, motion picture, Universal Studios, United States.
Yasmine Ghabbar
group4thefuture 