Post #1807440
2026-04-30 08:32 UTC
The great Orwellian contribution to future technology is that the
television set is two-way, and that the people who are forced to hear and
see the television screen can themselves be heard and seen at all times and
are under constant supervision even while sleeping or in the bathroom.
Hence, the meaning of the phrase ‘Big Brother is watching you’.
This is an extraordinarily inefficient system of keeping everyone under
control. To have a person being watched at all times means that some other
person must be doing the watching at all times (at least in the Orwellian
society) and must be doing so very narrowly, for there is a great
development of the art of interpreting gesture and facial expression.
Interesting that someone like Asimov has not seen how technology would make this possible, like it’s right now
Replies (3)
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@Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world 2026-04-30 10:27
Both Orwell and Asimov assumed that The Party would care about false positives.
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@Juice@midwest.social 2026-04-30 12:08
What no Foucault does to a MF. The idea that every person will only behave as though they are being watched if they are actually being watched, fails to recognize that if people know that they could be watched at any time, but can’t actually see if the watcher is watching them, they will behave as though they are being watched all the time. Panopticon goes brrrr
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@cypherpunks@lemmy.ml 2026-04-30 14:15
Interesting that someone like Asimov has not seen how technology would make this possible He did. A few paragraphs later he says: Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance.