Little Brother is Watching YOU!

November 14 2020

Little brother is watching you!  Beware!  Yes, that is you too.  And what Little Brother may you ask? You’ve obviously heard about “Big Brother Watching You” and you’ve known that since “1984” or to be more precise since 1949 when George Orwell published the eponymous novel. And that was in the third paragraph in the first chapter of his book where Big Brother watches and spies on everyone, all of the time in an authoritarian and totalitarian society where compliance is the norm and deviance harshly repressed.
Today, decades and miles away from “Oceania,” Orwell’s fictional state, we are starting to find out who that Big Brother is and how he works. With each passing day we are getting a “Clearview” of who we are facing or more likely who is looking at our faces 24/7. What we now see is that Big Brother and a new Little Brother are increasing becoming one, a blend of government and corporate eavesdropping, part of a family of surveillance devices and activities that monitor every single part of our daily life.
Everything, from the most mundane parts of our routines to the most intimate moments of our lives is being scrutinized by someone and for a specific purpose. Locations are tracked, so are workout routines, periods, purchases and generally every search we do, no matter where they take place. We used to look at countries and regimes such as China as prime examples of this surveillance state mentality but now that we are also letting a Little Brother take over every – almost for now – aspect of our lives. The difference between the “old” surveillance state and today’s is that in many cases, we have now forsaken privacy for the sake of convenience. While convenience and the free model of access to information we are used to are supposed to make our lives easier, we will have to decide what trade – offs we are willing to make between that convenience and privacy. As of today, we are still failing to create the social conditions that will keep surveillance in check. Another pernicious effect of this free for all model is that instead of enriching the quality of the information we are exposed to and willingly or unwillingly sharing, there has been a pauperization of the information we are consuming. As of today, even if they realize it, few or our social, political or even cultural institutions have taken a true measure of those threats. Of course, there are voices that are starting to sound alarms but netizens or ordinary citizens are even farther remote from this realization.
Little Brother is even more present than Big Brother ever was. We have more than eagerly and enthusiastically let that new Brother come into our lives in the form of smartphones and other smart devices that populate our pockets, purses, living rooms, bedrooms, playgrounds, running tracks, offices without realizing the kinds of data, information and insights governments and technology companies are getting about us and from us. No part of our world is now hidden or safe from this ubiquitous surveillance which has us under constant monitoring, checking, recording, monetizing our every physical or emotional states every moment of the day. Even sleep and dreams, which until today remained shielded from this constant monitoring, are not immune to that surveillance.
And the irony is that, not only do the “Brothers” spend a great part of the day watching us, now we also spend an equal amount of time watching them too, especially Little Brother. On average, most of use spend an average of 45 to 50 days or more per year looking at our smartphones. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has only increased usage exacerbating an already existing trend. Furthermore, more and more of us are becoming hooked to tactics and features that deliver tech drugs to our brains. With approximately 50% of the world’s population already using smartphones, this global addiction and network of surveillance will grow exponentially. By some Gartner estimates, in 2020, there will be 26 times more connected devices than people. Projections show rapid growth: by 2025, more than 75 billion so called Internet of Things (IoT) devices are expected to be connected worldwide. And more connections mean more potential for surveillance.
So, one more piece about privacy and surveillance will you say. Yes, but we will soon have fewer and fewer options if we let this state take over all aspects our lives. The grey zones seem to the shrinking by the minute. Throughout centuries, men and women have tried to reshape nature to suit their needs, soon machines will try to reshape us to suit their own. Hal was only a precursor. We will evolve from “Cogito ergo sum,” I think therefore I am to “Cogito ergo possunt,” I think therefore they can be. Left unchecked, the system will perpetuate itself organically and more scarily, maliciously.
Have we become so comfortably numb and blissfully ignorant of the future that we are creating? Some say they are honest citizens and that they have nothing to fear, that this state of affairs will also prevent crime and make their environments safer. In effect, that the benefits for the community outweigh the restrictions imposed on individual freedoms. The dangers of uber surveillance though are much more nefarious than this false sense of safety. When will we realize that our complacency will lead to a world where diverging opinions, dissent will be crushed and not embraced – and not just this, where any ideas of creativity, of nuance, will be silenced in favor of a system that ominously feeds on itself and wields total power “for its own sake” instead of that of its people. When that happens, Little Brother and Big Brother will have won the battle in our minds and for our minds and denied the people of yet another human right.

Copyright Novonda November 2020