BB-TV

Telescreens are here! In his famous book Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell wrote about how everybody in the Big Brother world had a device installed in their home called a Telescreen; it was a television set that contained a spy camera as well as a screen to show pictures. This meant you could watch it, but it could also watch you. And indeed it does; in one scene Winston is watching a home exercise programme and moving along to the instruction, but he is scolded by the presenter because he is not doing it correctly. Just a story, you might say, but it's been announced that very similar systems have been invented, Smart TV, see: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2513592/Is-TV-spying-YOU.html. This combined with the Digital Switchover makes for an uncomfortable combination, one in which watching TV is no longer just a casual and private pastime, see: http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2007/12/digital-tv.html. One of the slogans of Edge Media TV used to be "They're watching you watching us watching them." How true that could be!