I’ve seen the future and I don’t like it.

There’s a scene in 1984, where Winston takes his girlfriend to the room above the antiques shop and deludes himself that in this space, Big Brother will not be watching. Big Brother is everywhere. And the worst of it is Big Brother is no fun. It’s eerily prescient.

Our very own Big Brother, the reality television behemoth was just the same, except, the threat of death, destruction, and total alienation was replaced by a commercialised banality, a sludge of product endorsement and nihilism amidst the garbage heap of ordinary peoples lives. It was not the mind numbing drudgery, the meanness of a subsistence, of black bread ersatz coffee and fear, that was the dystopia promised by Orwell. From the book itself  there were no pictures, not much laughter and no happy ending.  The book established itself as the template for lives lived in the here and now. North Korea, Zimbabwe, Russia, and here in ol Canberra town.

Flatscreen

Except our 1984 is a materially nuanced dystopia. I sat just before midnight in Parliament Station, and noticed three big screens, really big screens . They’re flat screen, just like the ones prophesized in 1984. But in 1984, most of the time, the screens were used to watch the public, and occasionally Winston would watch the news. Of course he was involved in its production and pioneered the term ‘news-speak’.

Davros. Not Davos. The editors apologise for this inadvertent mistake. Similarities between the evil inventor of the Dalek and world domination have no bearing to his likeness “Rupert, Lord of darkness, and everyfink”!

Well in the modern dystopia, the people who must endure public transport. As distinct from those that drive, hire taxis, or teleport themselves between board rooms and Davros, (what’s the spelling?) must sit with the public, and the public are diminished these days. They just don’t have the clout.

Station Flatscreen

But it’s a special time at that time of night, its quiet. Eerily quiet and the beauty of it, whilst you wait to catch last train you’ve got time to reflect, and say to yourself, ‘I’m at peace, bed awaits me, and the train, a perfect conveyor to that special place of rest’. But it’s not to be. Spaced strategically on the other side of the tube, are three enormous flat screens. From the flat screen, loud enough so that I could hear everything, (I’m deaf) a constant barrage of Sky news, Commercials, Banks, expensive cars, and the surety that If you tune into fox news, (you have no choice) you could listen to Andrew, Peta, and others proclaim their Facts and Truth. Terrifying! Poor bastard Public.

Is this what happens to public transport when the infrastructure is privatised? I loathe dentists, not for the torture one anticipates, but the television. Similarly I hate and detest the medical profession, and eschew any waiting room that insults its clientele with a television. I adore Aldi. Not only do they not have televisions blaring, but there’s an absence of piped music. Aldi may be the most insidious form of global domination since Amway, but I’m all for it. But why the public transport users should be subjected to such mind bending, filth from Murdoch and his minions is beyond me. Or, more prosaically, ‘back to the future’, in a 1984 kinda way. Spare us the future. I want to get off.

Big Brother