Where did Big Brother hide??? It is in interactive television?

In is over famous book “1984” taking place in totalitarian regime, George Orwell described Big Brother main surveillance tool of its as a two-way telescreen, delivering propaganda downlink and reading their intimate thoughts uplink.

Clearly, without any uplink canal, the traditional television is not Big Brother. It's not the Internet either, as the web's uplink canal can be anonymous, gathers very fragmented information and not used by the whole population (trust me, there is many people out there that still related mouse to cheese and Internet to "not for me").

But what about interactive television? Indeed, the ITV combines the hypnotizing power of TV with an ID-related uplink canal, providing information, content (VOD) and t-commerce services. By knowing what you see and how you react the various stimuli implemented in each program, the ITV channel will definitely know who you are. Always better than your boss, in some case better than your boy/girlfriends, sometime better than you ; )

Add to that fact, that, in the upcoming convergent world of media and entertainment that we preparing now, having a unique ID per customer for most of its services in all its personal devices will be an important step to allow this cross-media cross-license convergence to take place. Whether this ID is you name and surname, your social security number or any other ID techniques, the results is the same: your cross-media cross-platform behavior will draw a very complete pictures of your intimate person. Last but not least, at one stage or another, legally or not, ethically or not, various public and private databases will be crossed. Will that be Big Brother ?

So are creating today the tool that will spy us tomorrow?
In the mid term, will competition betweens companies and laws of data protection be sufficient to protect citizens and individual's sphere of privacy?
After, a relevant targeted add can be an valuable information, so shall we really fear a global network that know everything of us?
If Big Brother heads the information / entertainment pyramids, is there any Big Sisters doing the same in the dating / sex / porn industries?

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Franco Papeschi

Vodafone

UK