| "The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound [...] would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.[...] [T]hey could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. | [The] promising technology in a set-top box that can, “can distinguish who is watching, potentially allowing Intel to target advertising”. The technology could potentially identify if the viewer is an adult or a child, male or female, and so on, through interactive features and face recognition technology. |
The product description on the left is from George Orwell’s 1984’s telescreen. On the right, we have Intel’s ad-targeting, face-recognizing TV.
Speculative fiction nailed reality, but missed the target on who was doing the spying.
The title here is, of course, from a later passage:
For some reason the telescreen in the living-room was in an unusual position. Instead of being placed, as was normal, in the end wall, where it could command the whole room, it was in the longer wall, opposite the window. To one side of it there was a shallow alcove in which Winston was now sitting, and which, when the flats were built, had probably been intended to hold bookshelves. By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen [...]
With this technology of course, the next logical extension would be hand-gesture based remote controls. So what does a hand with the middle finger only pointed straight up do, remote wise?
A) Skip to the next ad B) Vote the ad down to improve ratings C) Report you to the nearest business plan and marketing compliance association of america? D) All of the above.
In the future, the advertisement profiles for people wearing Guy Fawkes masks will be … odd.