The Modern Polyphemus

by A. Stout Babbitt

Odysseus escaped the man-eating Cyclops Polyphemus son of Poseidon, by putting out his single eye as he slept — a triumph by which the hero of the Odyssey salvaged what remained of his troop and ensured his ultimate return to his wife and family.

In modern times, escaping the unblinking gaze of the modern Polyphemus — the surveillance camera — is a far more difficult if nearly impossible goal. In my daily commute to work, I am watched by no less than five surveillance cameras, at least the five that I am aware of and able to account for. But the observation of my person does not end at the focal length of any particular camera. My activities at work too are monitored. In order for me to begin my daily routine and gain access to the materials by which I ply my trade, I am required to logon to a computer network, essentially to announce my presence, and in some hollow fashion, declare my intentions to accomplish a productive days work.

My online activities are observed as well: the network firewall determines whether or not certain Internet sites may be made available to me. I am required by the demands of my job as are many of us, to be available in person, by office telephone, cell phone, email, and walkabout device. In short, as a society we are required to be in an ever active and available state at an almost constant pace.

George Orwell's vision of 1984 foretold the treachery of Big Brother government by enforcing population control through the total examination of daily routine. Oceania, Orwell's fictitious continental nation was portrayed as a totalitarian regime that employed sadistic mechanisms in order to exact a routine of government that in so doing crushed the human spirit, removing community from the equation of self organization. Replacing it instead with suspicion, lies, and a total lack of trust for fellow man. Today however, it is not the militarization of society that threatens privacy, trust, and honor, but the civilianization and economical drive for such observation tactics by the devices mentioned earlier, an array of telephones, email devices, networks, cameras, and so on.

By organizations examining our every move, the honor trust and respect of completing a good days work is removed. Workers in every aspect of our culture are expected to perform as we always have, and trust the fact that the overseeing organization has our best intentions at heart.

Technology and science, it seems, have not met the promises of their investment: to lessen the burden on an already overtaxed human condition. As each successive evolution of technological advance matures, we are expected to adapt to the innovation; a conformance of sorts, a mandatory successive adoption of new methods by which to accomplish the same tasks and responsibilities accomplished yesterday.

But at the same token these devices broadcast in ever more detailed structure, position, frequency, and certain personal artifacts, politics, recreational preferences, sexual orientation, place of residence, etc. And in an increasingly patternistic effort by organizations of all types to judge capability, economic and otherwise, threat, desire, etc., we become mere characterizations of our preferences. Slave to the ways in which we behave, rather than cause for effect. Or in the most draconian circumstance, robbed by the interaction of those surrounding mechanisms of the ability to change.

Science and technology at its best and most noble, offers techniques to lengthen life expectancy, reduce child mortality rates, increase individual functionality and productivity, yet at the same time require the beneficiaries of these wonders to produce more, so they may afford the increasing financial burden required to employ them. This reversal of the oath proffered by science and technology, notably that technology is the grand equalizer, a unifier of societal strata, that in some    Go to the NEXT page of this piece.