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Surveillance in the 21st Century

 

            Where are you not under some type of surveillance? You have the opportunity to be by yourself, privately, at home, right? Is your cellphone located somewhere near you? If so, then someone has access to where you are. Can they hear you? No? Are you sure? That is okay. You already tweeted and updated your Instagram location as to where you are. It is easy to dismiss the idea that you are being watched, but maybe everyone is. Steven is the typical twenty-five year old working man in New York. He owns an apartment, which usually smells like instant noodles and beer, has security cameras, and obviously owns a television, laptop and an iPhone. This supposedly private space where Steven spends most of his time is, in fact, just as public as walking in the street. The recently purchased 3D television fascinates all his friends because it keeps track of the watcher's eyes and automatically adjusts the pixels to deliver a comfortable picture for the viewer. Unfortunately, the televisions manual did not include that this data is collected by advertising companies, who calculate which screens are to be considered premium and which advertisements engage the viewers the most, through your own eyes. His laptop is sold to him with a built-in camera and Microsoft Kinect, which is a program that has the ability to read the user's body language and predict how they are feeling. Most importantly, his phone is technically constantly being wiretapped. Everything Steven types into the phone, whether it is on social media, private texts, or even voice calls can be very easily retrieved; whether he deletes it or not. Once Steven gets ready to go to work and leaves his apartment, his attention is already claimed by numerous advertisements, starting with the minute he steps into the elevator. Steven's generation is undoubtedly the first in history to be constantly surrounded with a nonstop flow of information.


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