July 29. Day 210. You are being watched

Do you ever get the feeling you are being watched? If you don't there's something wrong with you. I am old enough to remember when 1984 was a book set in the future. I remember how outrageous the idea of constant surveillance by the government was. I still recall the teenage me grappling with the idea of what Room 101 would contain and tyring to convince myself that double speak and thought crime was the stuff of fiction. And now everywhere we go there's some security camera watching. Emails arrive from supermarkets offering me specials on products they know I will likely buy in future because my "loyalty" card says I have bought them in the past and every email I write is being captured for future use. The data in my phone allows me to be tracked and often my nearest and dearest do just that logging on to FindMyIPhone to find the phone's owner. But the scary thing about all this, the really scary thing, is that while some of this data collection I have no control over much I give away freely. You do not have to "check in" via your phone when you arrive somewhere. You do not have to tweet your every move. No-one is holding a gun against your head and forcing you to take a customer loyalty card. And like million and millions of others I do. All of this occurred to me as I sat in the audience of 1984 at QPAC this morning. Privacy, just as Orwell predicted, is a thing of the past. Big Brother is watching you and you are freely allowing him to do so.