Clementi, unlike Orwell’s Winston Smith, who hid from the telescreens whenever possible and understood that the price of personhood was ceaseless self-censorship and vigilance, had no way of knowing that the walls had eyes. Nor did his unseen observer anticipate the ultimate consequences of his intrusion.
In “1984,” the abolition of personal space was part of an overarching government policy, but nowadays it’s often nothing more than a side effect of wired high spirits.
Ours is a fragmentarian society, infinitely divided against itself and endlessly disrupted from within by much the same technologies that, in Orwell’s somber novel, assured a dull and deadening stability. In some ways, his nightmare vision of state control is cozy and reassuring by comparison. Big Brother may have stifled dissent by forcing conformity on his frightened subjects, but his trespasses were predictable and manageable. What’s more, his assaults on citizens’ privacy left the concept of privacy intact, allowing the possibility that with his overthrow people might live again as they once had.
Perhaps. Perhaps the technology that has dictated that this is "the way we live now" is a prison we choose to live inside. It is the technology which forces us to be in the spotlight, and forces us to be individuals.
