Do you remember the popular reality TV show, Big Brother? It was one of the first shows of its kind: a show where contestants are forced to live together under constant televised surveillance. It doesn't really matter if you remember the show or not though; any reality show will do. Let's take a more recent hit show like Love Island as an example instead. (Although Big Brother is actually still running!)

Love Island brings together a group of sexy singles in one house under the constant gaze of the camera. Naturally, the show takes turns being cringe and creepy - and transforms viewers into true voyeurs. You may think you'd never do such an unabashed, crazy thing as be on a show like Love Island. But, if you take the romance (or the many uncomfortable conversations about who's a contestant's "type" that are meant to equal romance in the show) out of the equation, you may find that you are on Love Island already. That's right. All of us are on Love Island (or perhaps just Island) for the simple reason that we are all under constant surveillance.

I mentioned Big Brother first because this show was named after a figure in George Orwell's acclaimed dystopian novel, 1984. Even if you haven't read 1984 - or watched the movie starring John Hurt (and actually produced in the year 1984!) - you'll likely be aware of some of its most memorable ideas.

In Orwell's novel, you are presented with a haunting totalitarian world in which the state has implemented mass-scale surveillance and social control. A "telescreen" can be found in every house, always watching you and listening to what you have to say with its "never-sleeping ear." This screen "could spy upon you night and day", its only limitation being that it couldn't spy on your thoughts. (However, characters were frequently convicted of "thoughtcrime" when their thoughts came out verbally or in their actions. More on this later.)

The person behind all of this spying was the all-seeing, omnipresent "Big Brother." Big Brother is always watching you, listening to you, and assessing whether you'll betray the state—a totalitarian nightmare.

There are a lot of similarities between Orwell's book and what we see today when it comes to mass surveillance. However, today's "Big Brother" may not necessarily be an authoritarian dictator, but rather something more insidious.

Governments of various countries are beginning to use artificial intelligence (AI) and data collection to spy on and police their citizens. Certain companies, such as SenseTime, sell biometric technology to countries to spy on their populations for security reasons.

Mass surveillance is most common in the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France, and Israel. According to Sarah Brayne of the American Sociological Association:

"In the past decade, two major structural developments intersected: the proliferation of surveillance in everyday life and the rise of “big data."

Big data aids broad-scale citizen-monitoring projects in various ways. However, governments and the police force are not the only ones using mass surveillance; private companies are, too.

Surveillance is an intense form of observation. We may not think about it too often but contemporary society is under constant observation.

One time I remember discovering this in a small, strange way was when I was going through old photos on my phone and found that my pictures had been catalogued according to certain categories such as "dogs", "cliffs", "performances", "beaches", "food" and "birds". It felt unnerving to have my life observed and classified in this way. And this is just a tiny example of the ways in which we are constantly monitored by technology.

From the use of security cameras in parking lots, shopping centers, and on street corners, to facial recognition technology used to detect the identity of criminals - or the owners of phones - we are always be watched.

And listened to.

For iPhone users, Siri is basically always on, listening to what you say in case that happens to be "Hey Siri". Though Apple insists that Siri isn't really eavesdropping on your conversations, it can be disconcerting to think that Siri is always there, lurking in the background.

In the digital age, are you ever truly alone?

As I alluded to earlier, in 1984, the biggest crime you can commit is thoughtcrime - thinking traitorous thoughts about the government. And keeping your thoughts secret proves to be very difficult. The Thought Police exist purely to uncover thought criminals and bring them to justice. As Orwell writes, thoughtcrime is "the essential crime that [contains] all others in itself". Although thoughtcrime is not considered a crime in real life, the introduction of laws against hate speech in certain countries reflects a similar policing of language and expression.

In addition to this, social media companies use both people and algorithms to moderate users' content and flag infringements on their community guidelines, which will be taken down. Users who've committed acts of hate speech or other problematic activities too many times will eventually have their accounts banned, or be made into "unpersons" as Orwell would say.

As Kalev Leetaru wrote for Forbes, today, rather than a presidential figure, Big Brother "is a small cadre of private companies in Silicon Valley and their executives that wield absolute power over what we are permitted to see and say online." This isn't half as drastic as the dealings of the Thought Police in 1984, but the resemblance remains and points to the possibilities of a world in which this policing of expression could be taken to the extreme.

Most contemporary countries are not dictatorships with a clear, singular Big Brother watching over them. However, Big Tech is poised to fill a similar role even if only because it has the power to do so.

Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, uses the term "surveillance capitalism" to examine the new economics enabled by the internet and big data. Predictive data analytics is used by surveillance capitalists to figure out which adverts will attract consumers, and to predict online behavior. An example of this can be seen in the augmented reality game, Pokémon Go. This once wildly popular game used data surveillance to drive footfall to different establishments with game designers determining a way in which to herd players through towns and cities to destinations that could generate a profit, without the players connecting the dots. As Zuboff says:

"Rather than an intimate Big Brother that uses murder and terror to possess each soul from the inside out, these digital networks are a Big Other: impersonal systems trained to monitor and shape our actions remotely, unimpeded by law."

In this vision, "Big Other" knows everything about you, but its operations remain covert, making it difficult to resist. Zuboff calls this "instrumentarian power" rather than totalitarian power and considers it to be a severe impediment to democracy in the 21st century.

Critically, Big Other's knowledge is of us, not for us. And the imbalance of power in terms of how much the general public knows about mass surveillance and how much information mass surveillance has gathered on the public is cause for concern.

Today, it's not the telescreen that spies on us, but the little computer that lives in almost every pocket - the cellphone. Smartphones are both our gateway to the digital world and the gateway for private companies to pry into our personal data. With the internet of things, our world is increasingly interconnected, and surveillance is just as widespread as in 1984, while most people don't even realize it!

Big Other doesn't sit and watch you in your home and try to determine whether you've committed thoughtcrimes against the internet. Rather, this impersonal force pieces together your personal information to create a profile.

Online profiling entails collecting information about various internet users and their behavior online. A profile may include details such as your:

This is essentially an extension of more traditional marketing strategies around demographic segmentation, made possible by the web. Online profiling has come under scrutiny in terms of its ethics when it comes to learning about customer's political and religious views, their sexual orientation, and medical information.

However, it isn't all bad. Thanks to online profiling, you're more likely to see adverts that are relevant to you when scrolling through social media, for instance.

While Big Brother's operations are made possible through terror, Big Other's operations are more surreptitious - and supported by the average person, often unknowingly. For instance, you hand over our data on website after website through Cookies. HTTP cookies help web developers to provide you with a more personal and convenient website experience by remembering you, your login details, shopping cart contents, and more. These can be very useful to us as consumers and as people with poor memories or short attention spans.

However, these findings may be monetized, and even used to manipulate you further down the line.

Most recently, concerns have been raised as to the ethics of tracing people during the pandemic through various kinds of surveillance technologies. A paper called "Digital contact tracing and surveillance during COVID-19: General and Child-Specific Ethical Issues", conducted by members of UNICEF, considers the ethical concerns posed by the use of surveillance technology in tracking the spread of the novel coronavirus, especially as it pertains to the surveillance of children.

The technologies in use to better understand the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic include:

Facial recognition is a hot topic when it comes to privacy concerns especially as it pertains to identifying children.

The technologies listed above are being used to carry out two main forms of tracing:

The ethical question of using big data to track human behavior and activity looms large. We now have the capacity to trace the spread of a disease through our cell phones, alongside the power to sway voting decisions through Facebook ads. Big Other is as omnipresent as Big Brother in 1984 and opens up many questions around privacy and freedom of speech, as well as security. Surveillance technology can help make the streets safer, but at what cost?

Are we living in a dystopia like 1984, giving away crucial personal details to an impersonal internet overlord? Or to the corporations who dominate the landscape of the worldwide web? Or is this an overreaction?

Is the proliferation of data surveillance just an inevitable part of life? Something that helps marketers advertise their products and consumers find what they're looking to purchase? Some people argue that mass surveillance only a problem if you have something to hide - like illegal activity. Nothing to hide, nothing to worry about. But then, others, like those writing the UNICEF report, worry about the potential dangers of data surveillance in the wrong hands - especially when it comes to tracking people, such as your children.

Should you accept all cookies on a web page you visit? And are the policies of Silicon Valley companies really tantamount to thought policing? It's easy to find such sweeping systems of monitoring intimidating and belittling. However, for many people, the fear of a loss of privacy is no longer front of mind as it was a few years ago. Oftentimes, it only really gets to you if you are the one being "cancelled" online or if your favorite celebrity is. Or if you discover that hotels with higher prices are bing advertised to you because you use a Mac and not a PC... Otherwise, people are largely oblivious or at least complacent in the goings-on of Big Other.

What do you think?