There is a telling moment in 1984 when protagonist Winston Smith questions the overhead birdsong. The sweet taste of black market chocolate is still coating his tongue as he sits in the middle of a wood, at last free from the telescreens that monitor his every move. “For whom, for what, was that bird singing?” he wonders. After all, there are no other birds nearby – nor, for once, are there any microphones listening in. “What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?”
Or to put it another way: “pics or it didn’t happen”. In George Orwell’s epochal dystopian novel, a third of the world lives under the watchful eye of the totalitarian leader Big Brother, and Winston can only dream of a life free of omnipresent surveillance. Today, not only does it seem passé to care about how often you’re caught on CCTV, we actually seemingly invite and enjoy surveillance with our camera doorbells, smart speakers, and constant vertical videoing. The internet mantra “pics or it didn’t happen” summarises our modern belief that everything must be documented to make things worthwhile.
