In Nineteen Eighty-Four, omnipresent screens watch and broadcast into people’s lives at all times. Orwell thought this would have to be forced on people; his characters are alternately afraid of these two-way TVs and bored by them. He never could have imagined that we would choose this dystopia of screens, that we would buy the tools of our own oppression, that we would volunteer for our own surveillance. He did not forsee the way we would slip into voluntarily trading our privacy for convenience and connection. He never could have dreamed that the same instrument might provide surveillance, propaganda, and addictive drug – the opiate and oppression of the masses in a single gesture.
[Click the image for the next Symmetry’s Overrated comic. Hit the arrows on your keyboard or below to see the next comic I made — not necessarily in the Symmetry’s Overrated series.]
This image originally appeared in this article in the Leveller on digital privacy.
Symmetry is Overrated 