What sci-fi isn't telling us about surveillance, privacy and freedom


Stories about plucky, fearless outsiders fighting against the stifling forces of conformity are perennial favorites, whether at the bookstore or the box office. But the rise of pervasive security technology has rendered this powerful narrative of democratic struggle obsolete, argues Dan Sarewitz of ASU’s Consortium for Science, Technology and Outcomes, in a Future Tense article for Slate magazine, co-written with Mark Hagerott, a professor of cybersecurity studies at the U.S. Naval Academy. 

In the face of telephone and digital surveillance, scanners that capture the license plates of every passing car and ubiquitous recording by security cameras, science fiction films seem bizarrely fixated on denying reality. In fact, recent science fiction movies frequently "disinvent" existing surveillance technologies in order to “retell the myth of how rebels against 'the system' help preserve free and open societies."

This means that supposedly futuristic films like "In Time," "The Hunger Games," "Enemy of the State," "The Adjustment Bureau" and "Total Recall" “posit a future that is less technologically developed than the present.”

Sarewitz and Hagerott hold that in our fictional and actual futures, the rebels fighting the system will be more like security analyst Edward Snowden or the hacker-punk heroes of "The Matrix," "who have the technical chops to evade and hack their way out of the security web," instead of the everyday, unlikely heroes we have grown accustomed to.

They conclude by wondering: "if our stories of rebellion against conformity are plausible only when the rebels are security-state insiders or technological super-experts, shouldn’t we begin to wonder whether the future that such narratives are supposed to be warning us about has already arrived?"

Future Tense is a collaboration among ASU, the New America Foundation and Slate magazine that explores how emerging technologies affect policy and society.

Article source: Slate magazine

More ASU in the news

 

Experts speak on election misinformation

Milton joins Helene as a rapidly growing hurricane. Scientists point to climate change

ASU Report: Latinos contribute over $72B to Arizona economy