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The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it
by napier 6y ago
The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. . . The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, 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. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.
- Jtsummers 6y agoWhen I first saw Mirror advertised this was my first thought.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoYou absolutely nailed the best possible quote about this.
- chrisseaton 6y agoI don't really understand what point you're trying to make. The relevant part of the mirror in the quote you're giving from 1984 is that it was compulsory. This product is optional. That means I think they're not really comparable. You can make anything sound dystopian if it were compulsory. When it's a tool people choose to use it can be empowering and help people achieve the goals they had before they chose the product. I'm not sure this is really an intelligent or meaningful criticism. I think it's just snark - something said for the sake of it that sounds witty but doesn't really stand up if you think about it.
- cosmodisk 6y agoA mirror showing some training videos may not sound much but we already live in this dystopian world: Google knows all my secrets, I rely on Amazon in so many ways, it's ever hard to comprehend. People have TVs and Alexas that do actively listen to their conversations,not always when they'd like to. We literally sleep walked into this whole thing already.
- kadoban 6y agoI think it's less snark for me. There is a somewhat realistic concern that we're buying our own surveilance state one piece at a time. These corporations are very powerful, and we're inviting their surveilance tools into our homes without IMO a great guarantee of what's done with our data. They also tend to have a pretty cushy relationship with governments. And even where they don't, governments are able and usually willing to compromise these devices for their own purposes. That exists on a specrum from law enforcement asking for data, to the NSA and similar using security vulernabilities they buy or develop. This device in particular is probably not a big deal for the above, but it's one more for the pile.
- leppr 6y agoIt really is just a funny parallel. In objective, pragmatic terms, we've already been way beyond telescreens for a while with smartphones. They are as mandatory for upper-middle class status as telescreens are in 1984, but far more invasive.
- TuringNYC 6y agoThings are often optional until they are not. Smartphones are optional, but much of life -- say in Corporate America -- assumes you have one. Not by policy, but by social expectation.
- Falling3 6y agoOne could argue that peer pressure and forced convenience are often more effective approaches than compulsion by the state.
- root_axis 6y agoIt's not a "forced convenience" it's a veritable one, hence the ubiquity of these devices.
- Falling3 6y agoIt's undeniably both. But the former was the focus of the discussion.
- root_axis 6y agoNo, it's not both, it's not forced by any conceivable definition of the word. Anyone claiming that society is forcing them to own a smart-phone is just making excuses for not wanting to give up the convenience, but nothing is actually stopping them from doing it.
- cosmodisk 6y agoAll they needed to do is to call it Black Mirror. 1984 quote is spot on ,by the way.
- __lazybyte 6y agoHow Orwellian could it get?
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoWithout citation this comment is essentially plagiarism. To the unfamiliar, it's from 1984, by George Orwell (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four)
- minerjoe 6y agoFour score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war... Plagiarism?
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoComparing one of the most famous opening lines of speech in American history to a specific few sentences from the middle of a novel? Sure...fair comparison.
- napier 6y agoA novel that almost everyone who spends time here has read.
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoThat's an assumption with zero backing.
- doc_gunthrop 6y agoBy the way, if you're going to avoid giving proper attribution, at least put quotes around the passage being quoted. Otherwise it's implied that those words came from you.
- jessedhillon 6y agoI don't know whether to downvote this comment for myopic focus on possibly the most irrelevant detail, or upvote it for masterfully interpreting the theme of this thread: dogmatically catastrophizing the inane. Truly a Kaufmanian contribution.
- CamperBob2 6y agoThis thing sounds more Yeats than Orwell: For all things turn to barrenness In the dim glass the demons hold, The glass of outer weariness, Made when God slept in times of old.
- PascLeRasc 6y agoTVs bad. Phones bad. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software.
- dilandau 6y agoThe wicked queen in snow white had a talking mirror, too.
- tootie 6y agoThe Mirror is literally a mirror though. Does it even have a camera? If it does, you cover it or unplug it when not in use. There's probably 10 cameras in your house right now and you can turn them all off.