In 1994, the room didn’t watch you. But now, agent Scully discovers a listening device in her pen.
Watch it again. The tone is one of absolute shock. The music, the tension in the camera work, everything points to a single, horrifying fact – agent Scully is being surveilled! The 1994 audience is completely aghast at this gross violation of privacy.
Privacy…
I experienced privacy once, in 2023, while camped in a desert so remote that the stars cast shadows at night with the sagebrush. My companion and I spent days driving a beat up truck to get there. After we arrived and set up camp, we stashed our phones (and anything electronic) in the truck.
The desert was calling, so we walked far away, and talked for hours, about life, our problems, the universe – the sorts of things folks talk about when alone together in the desert. And nothing listened. For all intents and purposes, that conversation existed in that moment, and only that moment. The desert heard our joys and difficulties, holding them in its dusty air, and then, at the speed of sound, they vanished forever.
I was agent Scully. I left the pen in the car.
Now – surveillance.
Are you in a vehicle? Microphones hear you.
Are you at home? Your TV, your watch, your AI assistant – listening to every word you say.
Does your friend have a cell phone in their pocket? Without pause or exception, your voice is captured.
You are agent Scully. And the pen is everywhere.
In 1994, no matter where you were, your speech, your facial expressions, the subtle reflections of your inner world which happen in every moment of every day were transitory and entirely your own. They arose, passed through you, and like the remote desert air, were swallowed up in the fleeting nothingness of a single moment.
That – that, was privacy.
And what of ourselves now? The omniscient gaze of traffic cameras, phone cameras, laptop cameras, the cameras in our TVs, our cars, our Amazon Rings, the cameras in our fucking smart refrigerators? What happens to us, in them? Do their shutters and microphones lose us with each silent click, click, click of their relentless operation? Do we vanish into them like the parched desert air?
Agent Scully is watching you, now.
Click, click, click.
We are captured. We are hoarded. Then, with ease – Emotional States Predicted Using Behavioral Markers Derived From Passively Sensed Data – we are used, meticulously, to build a profile of who we, precisely, are, and exactly what makes us tick.
Then, we are sold to the highest bidder. To advertisers, political parties. Selling us the next thing. The next vote. Click, click, click, goes the camera shutter. All of them, all around us, every moment of every day. It’s silent enough to the human ear, but the microphones can hear it.
None of it is parsed by agent Scully, of course, or by any human. Emotional States Predicted Using Behavioral Markers Derived From Passively Sensed Data – A Machine Learning Approach.
And now, they control us.
The next TikTok, the next Instagram Reel – how easy it is. Like programming an appliance. We do what they want, and at such low cost! Simply amazing. It puts the old slave plantations to shame.
And now it is 1994, and agent Scully is shocked, because there is a listening device in her pen. I have no privacy here she gasps, silently, as the camera rolls, and the poorly sautered prop lays exposed on the desk. This new thing – foreign thing. Disgusting thing. Worthy of shock.
I have no privacy here.
Written by Sam Cardoza in 2025 without the use of generative AI.
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