An hour ago I walked into a Post Office somewhere in Scotland. I was immediately greeted with a screen hanging down from the ceiling.
Onn the left 75% portion of the screen a bunch of different camera feeds and on the right portion, running vertically - still photos of my face and other customers faces who were currently in the shop.
…And next to these still photos were things like:
Age: Middle aged male
Emotion: …
Glasses: No
Etc.
I asked the shop keeper why they were showing this, and I was met with arguments like ‘these are everywhere’, ‘airports have them too’.
I replied that an airport is understandably doing this, due to being a terrorism threat. But this was a small Post Office in a tiny village town in the countryside. So like comparing apples to toilet paper.
I asked why the camera was trying to guess my emotion. To which I was replied to ‘if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about’.
Society has been so conditioned into the assumption that what we have today we will have tomorrow. Except in a world of potential Trumps, Xi Jinping, Putin and more… we are setting ourselves up for the complete unknown of tomorrow.
This 1984 Scotland is now a place I feel like the reason to live has been dwindled down to just pure existence. I don’t think I had ever felt quite like this before this trip to the Post Office today. Life doesn’t feel like ours anymore. It’s someone else’s. The people behind the surveillance and the conditioned people who normalise it.
Just because the technology exists, shouldn’t mean it needs to be used. When will people ever start respecting other’s privacy? And when will people ever give a damn about it.
If this is already where we’re at in 2024, where are we all going to be by 2030? Is life as full of the same point today than what it was 10 years ago. And will it be less full of point by 2030.
An hour ago I walked into a Post Office somewhere in Scotland. I was immediately greeted with a screen hanging down from the ceiling.
Onn the left 75% portion of the screen a bunch of different camera feeds and on the right portion, running vertically - still photos of my face and other customers faces who were currently in the shop.
…And next to these still photos were things like:
Age: Middle aged male Emotion: … Glasses: No Etc.
I asked the shop keeper why they were showing this, and I was met with arguments like ‘these are everywhere’, ‘airports have them too’.
I replied that an airport is understandably doing this, due to being a terrorism threat. But this was a small Post Office in a tiny village town in the countryside. So like comparing apples to toilet paper.
I asked why the camera was trying to guess my emotion. To which I was replied to ‘if you are doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about’.
Society has been so conditioned into the assumption that what we have today we will have tomorrow. Except in a world of potential Trumps, Xi Jinping, Putin and more… we are setting ourselves up for the complete unknown of tomorrow.
This 1984 Scotland is now a place I feel like the reason to live has been dwindled down to just pure existence. I don’t think I had ever felt quite like this before this trip to the Post Office today. Life doesn’t feel like ours anymore. It’s someone else’s. The people behind the surveillance and the conditioned people who normalise it.
Just because the technology exists, shouldn’t mean it needs to be used. When will people ever start respecting other’s privacy? And when will people ever give a damn about it.
If this is already where we’re at in 2024, where are we all going to be by 2030? Is life as full of the same point today than what it was 10 years ago. And will it be less full of point by 2030.
Edit: typos