How would you feel if you lived in the 1984 story by George Orwell?

[purringcattle007]

As much as I hate the boring book and fall asleep in class, we're reading it in English as a class in school. I'm a senior in high school. I also watched an episode of America's Book of Secrets and it was about loosing our privacy. That episode was based off this book.

If I lived in this story, I'd hate to have someone always watching me and having a telescreen everywhere in my house. I don't take private for granted per se, but this is REAL invasion of privacy. I don't thing I could stand living there and always be scared of getting caught by the Thought Police.

How would you feel if you lived in this story?

[MavistheMaven]

Seriously?? We're living in the story NOW.

You're using your computer. If you have Windows 8 or a Mac, you signed away your right to privacy in how you use your computer. Microsoft and Apple claim the right to monitor what you do on it, whether it's where you go on the Internet to what you write in your documents.

We agree to let stores and businesses track us via those discount cards. If you want health insurance, the Obamacare website insists on knowing exactly who you are, where you've lived for the last umpteen years, where you get your income from now and how much, etc. Your health insurance company wants much the same information. Those privacy policies you sign when you first see a new doctor give the physician the right to share your information with researchers, vendors and others, even though they talk about keeping your information confidential and using aggregate totals. If you have one of the newer cars, it may track where you go, how fast you drive, etc - all in the name of safety and being able to diagnose problems when your car has them. Want a new job? Employers will search the Internet for you. It's not just Facebook - they can see aerial views of your house and neighborhood, any activity that makes it into a newspaper, whether it's singing in the church choir or gigging at a nightclub. (Maybe okay, but they may not like your particular church, or they may not want you moonlighting or aspiring to a musical career.)

America is the new Russia: We have freedom of speech, but what we say is ever more tracked, and there may be consequences. And we agree to it all, because the surveillance is the price of being allowed to do something, or it'll save us money, or it's for our own safety, etc. etc.

[CA mom]

ever wonder what happens to the satellite pics before the people are edited out of them?

and cameras are all over the place now.

a book that has some interesting takes on the "everything public" concept is Earth by David Brin.