You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you.
— Season one opening voice-over by Harold Finch
The "Tel-a-vision" series Person of Interest aired 5 seasons between 2011 and 2016. The plot focused on an artificially intelligent system referred to as "The Machine." which listened to and surveyed everything and every one and made predictions in a kind of "Precrime" reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. But unlike Dick's story, The government only cares about possible terrorist plans. Anyone else that The Machine identifies as a probable victim of a violent crime that is not terror related is shit-out-of-luck.
Luckily for these would be victims, The Machine's programmer, Harald Finch does care. Knowing that the government would try to get rid of him, Harald programmed a backdoor in order to still acquire the information on victims the government consider "irrelevant" in order to try to save them.
This is no easy task, which is why Harald decides to recruit a long thought dead CIA agent who also served in the Army as a Green Beret - John Reese. As the series progresses, the team grows as well.
Though I really enjoyed the show, I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not really all that far-fetched. There are cameras everywhere, in stores, in banks, on the streets, and people taking selfies and posting them to the internet. I can hardly imagine that there is not one adult on the entire planet who hasn't been photographed and cataloged by one agency or another. (Adjusts his tinfoil hat for maximum comfort and effectiveness)
I only watched up to season 3 before the idea just got so creepy and my own paranoia started to get the best of me. I started to, periodically, adjust my appearance - Short hair, long hair, mustache, clean shaven, or hipster beard. Pretty soon, even I forgot what I looked like. But no matter what I did, people on the street kept recognizing me. They'd call out to me "You Dork!" or I'd hear them talking about me "Hey, would you look at that Dork!". I didn't know what else to do. When I typed "surveillance" in my search engine, my antivirus informed me that Microsoft Edge is using my webcam. Wait, what?!?
But seriously now, I do think that technology is moving in that direction, if we are not already there. WE are being watched
But what do you think?
Did you watch the show, and what did you think about it?
Is our tech and our government leading us into this Orwellian nightmare?
Let me know in the comments below.
And please be sure to recommend!
