Ep 2: Telescreens

Available for over a year

Helen Lewis and Ian Hislop refine their focus in this second episode of Orwell Vs Kafka to examine what the warnings and insights in the novel’s of both men tell us about Surveillance and the human response to it. We’re often told that as a nation we’re subject to more camera surveillance than most, and Helen speaks to Gavin Saul of Verrimus, a Newcastle based company specialising in technical surveillance counter measures, to measure the truth of that. He describes the extent of modern surveillance and the acceptance of it through what he refers to as normalcy bias, the shrugged shoulder reaction to the reality of smart phone dependence. Helen and Ian are also joined by Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch, an organisation that took it’s name from Orwell’s dystopian vision of a people permanently under surveillance. She talks about the extent to which Orwell’s warning was prescient, as was Kafka’s awareness that surveillance often becomes internalised, with the subjects effectively policing themselves. And they lighten the tone somewhat in a conversation with Anna Nolan, the runner up on the first UK TV production of Big Brother House. Anna recalls what it felt like to be under surveillance for the sake of entertainment, and why there was an inevitable air of religiosity about accepting the presence of an all-seeing eye, something that hovers in the background of both Kafka and Orwell’s writing. Producer: Tom Alban