Big Brother
Big Brother is the embodiment of the totalitarian state in George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Big Brother is always watching the populace and controls their every move.
The number of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in the UK (in London it is said you will be caught and recorded over 300 times per day) has led to the expression: "we're living in a Big Brother society."
There is rising disquiet with the situation even in the rural areas of the UK[1] where the number of CCTV cameras is rising.
"George Orwell" was the pen-name of one Eric Arthur Blair. The surname does not indicate any relationship to the recent Premier of the United Kingdom, even though Orwellian surveillance and draconian anti-terrorist legislation introduced during his term in office might be thought by some to indicate some kind of weird ironic link.
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[edit] Effect of 9/11
Additional Big Brother surveillance is seen in the interception of e-mails and phone calls following 9/11. Even such activities as Google searching (say for "pipe bomb") might be intercepted.
The U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ("Gitmo") houses a Big Brotheresque prison camp where there is little or no chance of appeal against injustice.[2] Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown pushed for twice the current legal time limit on "holding without charge" - to 56 days for suspects in terrorism related cases.[3]
[edit] A curious inversion
In spite of most modern societies not being full of pervasive cameras recording their every move and telling people what to do, the nature of television advertising (and programming) at a psychological level may have a similar effect - people watching it absorb the idioms presented to a greater or lesser extent, with those idioms having a normative effect. As a result, behaviour is "controlled" through a probably unplanned feedback loop: Advertisers try certain concepts, or memes, to promote products. Sales of the products to an extent determine the effectiveness of the meme, creating selective pressure on which memes work and for what. The memes are then refined over "generations," with the additional background selective pressure of the advertisers' goals. In other words, the one pressure the population at large is not allowed to introduce is "what they really want." Their contribution is to inform the advertising industry "how to get us to do what you want." So, rather than Big Brother watching us, we watch Big Brother.
[edit] TV show
The "reality" television show Big Brother takes its name from the constant surveillance throughout Orwell's book. (In Britain the programme is produced by Endemol, a company run by a descendant of the creator of the vast London sewage system - from removing ordure to producing it in three generations.)
The requirements to be a "contestant" on the show are an exceptionally low IQ score (one recent housemate thought carrots grew on trees[4]), an extremely short temper, and a seriously inflated sense of self-importance.