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Search results for tag #orwell

[?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
@wistquotes@friendica.world

A quotation from Orwell

It is a commonplace that the Christian Heaven, as usually portrayed, would attract nobody. Almost all Christian writers dealing with Heaven either say frankly that it is indescribable or conjure up a vague picture of gold, precious stones, and the endless singing of hymns. This has, it is true, inspired some of the best poems in the world […] but what it could not do was to describe a condition in which the ordinary human being actively wanted to be.

George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
Essay (1943-12-20), “Can Socialists Be Happy?” Tribune Newspaper [as John Freeman]

More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/85331/

    Privacy and Surveillance boosted

    [?]Script Kiddie » 🌐
    @scriptkiddie@anonsys.net

    Inside the growing to knock out

    source: theguardian.com/us-news/ng-int…

    Surveillance is becoming more common in modern . Many governments use cameras and digital systems to improve public safety and help solve . Supporters believe these technologies make communities safer and allow officers to respond more quickly to criminal activities.

    However, many people are worried about . Surveillance systems can collect large amounts of personal data, including information about where people travel and how they move through public spaces. Critics argue that innocent citizens should not be monitored without a clear reason or a legal warrant.

    Some activists protest against these systems through political campaigns, while others choose direct action by disabling surveillance cameras. This has started a wider debate about the balance between and . The also raises important ethical questions about , personal privacy, and the role of technology in . Finding the right between protecting society and protecting individual rights remains one of the biggest of the digital age.

    Location: Matrix

    Annelies boosted

    [?]Script Kiddie » 🌐
    @scriptkiddie@anonsys.net

    : Spider-Man: Brand New Day – A for the State?

    At first, : Brand New Day looks like another emotional . Peter Parker has lost everything. No one remembers him, not even MJ. He searches for his while trying to protect . The spends much of its time on , , and .

    But behind this personal story lies a political . The film presents mass surveillance as something necessary and even heroic. This is where the becomes much more interesting—and much more troubling.

    Spider-Man uses powerful surveillance to watch the city. He collects video from many security cameras. He scans every face to find criminals. Even the admit that this is probably . Still, the film treats these actions as acceptable because Spider-Man is one of the "good guys."

    This idea has a long in popular culture. The strongest comparison is George Orwell's 1984. imagined a where every citizen is watched. Surveillance is presented as a tool for , but it destroys . In Brand New Day, the situation is different because Spider-Man is a hero, not a dictator. Yet the basic question remains the same: Who watches the watchers? If one person can see everyone, who controls that person?

    The film never really asks this . Instead, it assumes that surveillance is good as long as the right people it. This is one of its biggest .

    Another interesting comparison is The Dark Knight. In Christopher Nolan's film, creates a machine that can monitor every mobile phone in Gotham. Lucius Fox calls it too dangerous because it gives one person unlimited power. Batman agrees. He uses the system only once to catch the and then destroys it immediately.

    Brand New Day takes a very different approach. Spider-Man's surveillance technology is not treated as a . Instead, it becomes a normal of fighting. The ethical debate that makes The Dark Knight so powerful is almost completely missing.

    The transcript also compares Spider-Man's work with modern surveillance technology. Peter Parker works closely with the Department of Damage Control and helps collect huge amounts of personal data. The review argues that this creates a positive image of a close relationship between institutions and powerful technology companies.

    This makes the film feel surprisingly modern. Today, governments and private companies collect enormous amounts of digital information. Cameras, facial recognition, smartphones and artificial make surveillance easier than ever before. The movie reflects this reality but rarely questions it.

    One of the most interesting contradictions is himself. He wants for his own life. He hides his identity and wants to escape public attention. At the same time, he watches everyone else and scans thousands of faces. The film never fully explores this contradiction.

    This creates an uncomfortable message. Privacy seems important for the hero but less important for ordinary citizens.

    The citizens themselves hardly have a voice. They mostly watch, cheer and accept Spider-Man's actions without . They never decide whether they want to live in such a . They simply the hero.

    As , Spider-Man: Brand New Day offers impressive visuals and emotional performances. However, its political ideas deserve much more attention. The film normalizes mass surveillance while presenting it as an act of kindness and . It replaces difficult ethical questions with emotional storytelling.

    Unlike 1984, it does not warn us about surveillance. Unlike The , it does not seriously question its use. Instead, it asks the to trust the hero completely.

    That may be the film's most surprising message. The greatest danger is not an government forcing surveillance on its people. The greater danger is that we willingly accept surveillance because it is carried out by someone we like.

    Spider-Man: Brand New Day succeeds as an emotional superhero . As a political film, however, it raises fascinating questions without giving convincing answers.

    Location: Matrix

      [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
      @wistquotes@friendica.world

      A quotation from Orwell

      It is not easy to find a direct economic explanation of the behaviour of the people who now rule the world. The desire for pure power seems to be much more dominant than the desire for wealth. This has often been pointed out, but curiously enough the desire for power seems to be taken for granted as a natural instinct, equally prevalent in all ages, like the desire for food. Actually it is no more natural, in the sense of being biologically necessary, than drunkenness or gambling. And if it has reached new levels of lunacy in our own age, as I think it has, then the question becomes: What is the special quality in modern life that makes a major human motive out of the impulse to bully others? If we could answer that question — seldom asked, never followed up — there might occasionally be a bit of good news on the front page of your morning paper.

      George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
      Essay (1946-11-29), “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper

      More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/85229/

        [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
        @wistquotes@friendica.world

        A quotation from Orwell

        To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

        George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
        Essay (1946-03-22), “In Front of Your Nose,” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper

        More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/5099/

          [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
          @wistquotes@friendica.world

          A quotation from Orwell

          The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time; the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against a solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

          George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
          Essay (1946-03-22), “In Front of Your Nose,” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper

          More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/29647/

            [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
            @wistquotes@friendica.world

            A quotation from Orwell

            I suggest that the real objective of Socialism is not happiness. Happiness hitherto has been a by-product, and for all we know it may always remain so. The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue.

            George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
            Essay (1943-12-20), “Can Socialists Be Happy?” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper [as John Freeman]

            More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/47663/

              Privacy and Surveillance boosted

              [?]Script Kiddie » 🌐
              @scriptkiddie@anonsys.net

              The Circle: The Scariest Part Isn't Big Tech. It's Us.

              When The Circle hit theaters in 2017, many people saw it as another tech thriller. Today, it feels less like science fiction and more like tomorrow's news feed.

              The movie is based on Dave Eggers' bestselling novel, often called the 1984 of the digital age. Ironically, the film improves on the book in one important way. Instead of explaining every idea through endless dialogue, it lets us see them. The result is faster, smoother and much easier to watch. But it still feels more like an essay than a real story.

              Mae Holland lands her dream job at The Circle, a giant tech company that looks like a mix of Google, Apple, Meta and TikTok. The campus is bright, colorful and full of smiling people. Everyone talks about changing the world. That is the first warning sign.

              Modern tech companies rarely say they just want to build products or make money. They promise to make humanity better. The Circle sells exactly that dream. Soon Mae believes privacy is outdated. If you have nothing to hide, why keep secrets? She starts wearing a tiny camera that livestreams her entire life. Every second. Every conversation. Every emotion. Imagine if your entire life became one endless Twitch stream.

              This world feels like a strange combination of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Control no longer comes through fear alone. It comes through convenience, entertainment and the promise of a better future. Looking at today's AI boom, smart homes and endless social media feeds, the movie suddenly feels much less fictional than it did a few years ago.

              One scene stands out. The Circle suggests that voting should happen through its own platform. If everyone already has an account, why not connect democracy directly to the app? It sounds efficient. Maybe even practical. The movie briefly asks whether democracy itself could become a product owned by a private company. That is one of its most interesting ideas.

              Sadly, it never explores that question.

              Instead, the ending takes the easy Hollywood route. Rather than challenging the system, it blames a few powerful executives. Once their private emails are exposed, the audience is expected to believe justice has been served. As if replacing a CEO could solve everything.

              But that misses the real problem.

              Systems survive because people are replaceable. Remove one tech billionaire and another one will take the job. The real issue is a business model built on collecting more data, measuring human behavior and turning attention into profit. It doesn't matter whether the CEO is friendly or arrogant. If the machine stays the same, the result stays the same.

              That idea feels even more relevant today. We often argue about individual tech leaders. But should we? The real question is why any company should have that much power in the first place. Whether it is Meta, Google, Apple or the next AI giant, the structure remains the same.

              The movie also lets us off the hook too easily. It is comforting to blame powerful corporations. Harder to admit that we help build this world ourselves. We accept the cookies. We install the apps. We trade privacy for convenience. We buy smart speakers, connect everything to the cloud and tell ourselves it is worth it because life becomes easier.

              That may be The Circle's biggest weakness. It criticizes Silicon Valley's worldview but forgets to criticize ours. Most people are not driven by ideology. They simply choose what is new, useful and comfortable. That is how surveillance becomes normal—not because anyone forces us, but because we quietly invite it into our homes.

              The movie offers only one alternative: rejecting technology completely and escaping into nature. But that feels just as unrealistic as total digital transparency. It presents two extremes while ignoring everything in between.

              Despite its flaws, The Circle remains a fascinating warning. Not because it predicts the future perfectly, but because so much of its future has already become our present.

              Why am I writing about such an old movie? Shouldn't we have much smarter, deeper movies about AI, surveillance and Big Tech by now? Or have we simply become so used to these technologies that we no longer notice what is happening? Has Silicon Valley slowly won us over with its own propaganda? If you know any newer movies or series that tackle these questions in a more thoughtful way, let me know in the comments. I'm always looking for the next great warning before it becomes reality.

              movie poster from the circle with the face of Emma Watson

              Alt...movie poster from the circle with the face of Emma Watson

              Location: Matrix

                Privacy and Surveillance boosted

                [?]Thom Aster » 🌐
                @thomaster@mastodon.social

                The European Court of Human Rights ruled GCHQ's mass surveillance UNLAWFUL.

                14 judges dissented. Three quoted Orwell's 1984:

                "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment."

                thomaster.substack.com/p/gchq-

                  [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
                  @wistquotes@friendica.world

                  A quotation from Orwell

                  Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

                  George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
                  Essay (1943-12-20), “Can Socialists Be Happy?” “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper [as John Freeman]

                  More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/47354/

                    [?]WIST Quotations » 🌐
                    @wistquotes@friendica.world

                    A quotation from Orwell

                    It is commonly assumed that what human beings want is to be comfortable. Well, we now have it in our power to be comfortable, as our ancestors had not. Nature may occasionally hit back with an earthquake or a cyclone, but by and large she is beaten. And yet exactly at the moment when there is, or could be, plenty of everything for everybody, nearly our whole energies have to be taken up in trying to grab territories, markets and raw materials from one another. Exactly at the moment when wealth might be so generally diffused that no government need fear serious opposition, political liberty is declared to be impossible and half the world is ruled by secret police forces. Exactly at the moment when superstition crumbles and a rational attitude towards the universe becomes feasible, the right to think one’s own thoughts is denied as never before. The fact is that human beings only started fighting one another in earnest when there was no longer anything to fight about.

                    George Orwell (1903-1950) English journalist, essayist, writer [pseud. of Eric Arthur Blair]
                    Essay (1946-11-29), “As I Please” column, Tribune Newspaper

                    More about this quote: wist.info/orwell-george/84548/

                      Privacy and Surveillance boosted

                      [?]Script Kiddie » 🌐
                      @scriptkiddie@anonsys.net

                      ‘BusPatrol’ Put in Tens of Thousands of . Now They Want to Give

                      source: 404media.co/buspatrol-put-ai-c…
                      without paywall: archive.is/20260526155324/404m…

                      is aware of the around cameras, and particularly of the concern that may gain access to the data, according to the BusPatrol documents ...

                      The danger here, aside from the misuse of data, is above all that children grow up with this and come to see it as normal to be constantly monitored by cameras. A society under constant surveillance develops differently. It is more conformist, less critical, and very keen on blending into the crowd unnoticed and not standing out. This is exactly what the ruling elite wants: a society that silently endures everything because it fears through the cameras.

                      Location: Matrix

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                        [?]OCTADE » 🌐
                        @octade@soc.octade.net

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