From the referenced article, readable online here complete with map:Irony is dead. The UK killed it: there are 28 CCTV cameras within 200 yards of George Orwell’s house.
No word on whether or not the Crompton Arms serves gin flavored with cloves.Use of spy cameras in modern-day Britain is now a chilling mirror image of Orwell's fictional world, created in the post-war Forties in a fourth-floor flat overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London. On the wall outside his former residence - flat number 27B - where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, an historical plaque commemorates the anti-authoritarian author. And within 200 yards of the flat, there are 32 CCTV cameras, scanning every move.
Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.
The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.
In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub, the Compton Arms, a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub.
Tags: George Orwell, 1984, surveillance society, irony
2 comments:
(Pasted in by SJKP from Gmail):
Irony has alas been dead for a while; I collected
this
image off the interwebs a few years ago.
That's hilarious in the wrong way, Steve.
Mind if I use it in a post?
I guess it turns out that the thing that wasn't so science-fiction-y in V for Vendetta was the surveillance. They already do have eyes everywhere, and the real irony was that it was a Briton who tried to tell us to watch out for it.
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