1984 26 Years Later

(Aired on May 17, 2010)

I'm sure when George Orwell wrote his book "1984", he didn't really imagine how extensive his prophecy would become. Nor that the cause of that prophecy's fulfillment was the need for public safety. In his book, Orwell talked about "Big Brother" and how the government would be watching us every time we turned around. But while the theory in Orwell's book centered around the government wanting to keep an eye on everything we do for its own nefarious means, the reality has been totally different.

While the government definitely wants to keep an eye on you, the reason Big Brother is out there is to protect public safety and provide control over crime. Surveillance cameras are everywhere these days, more so in the U.S. than anywhere, but we're not far behind. Cameras that take pictures if we run a red light, cameras on many intersection corners, cameras in every fast food and convenience store around, cameras at ATM's, cameras in school buses, in schools and in classrooms. The list never ends. Why are they there? Because the criminals have put them there. If we didn't have bullying in the schools, or vandalism around the city, if we didn't need to surveil ATM's to catch crooks, these cameras wouldn't be necessary. But unfortunately, they are.

While some of the uses of cameras to track the movements of crooks that you see on TV might be just a little far-fetched, it's not that much away from reality. We use satellite tracking to zoom in on just about anything, GPS keeps track of us on our cells, in our car, wherever we happen to be. That's good in some ways, if we get lost, if we get attacked, but it's still Big Brother keeping an eye on us. If George Orwell were alive today, I wonder if he would says to himself "I sure didn't envision this when I wrote the book."