Surveillance and scoring
Cameras, feeds, ratings and prediction: the watched life, from Seahaven to the social credit score.
12 pieces on Nearfi: 11 reviews and 1 essay. Across their 46 tracked predictions, 24 have arrived, 11 are arriving, 4 are near, 1 are far off and 6 went another way. The average P(n) is 73%. Closest to now: Little Brother at 99%. Furthest: Minority Report at 56%.
- ARRIVED Cheap, privately owned cameras everywhere feed a network that the public and the police can search. The Circle · 2025
- ARRIVED An ordinary person's daily life is broadcast live, around the clock, to a public audience. The Truman Show · 2007
- ARRIVED A hit show is built around one real person who doesn't know everyone around him is an actor. The Truman Show · 2023
- ARRIVING Ordinary people wear a device that continuously records what they hear and see, so their day can be replayed later. Black Mirror: The Entire History of You
- ARRIVING Protesters use encrypted phone-to-phone mesh networks to organise without the internet and out of sight of the authorities. Little Brother
- ARRIVING One real-name account holds a person's identity, logins and payments across the web. The Circle · est. 2029
- ARRIVING Quantum computers solve problems that no classical computer can solve in practice. Devs · est. 2030
- ARRIVING Software predicts individual human choices more accurately than our best theories of human behaviour. Devs · est. 2030
- ARRIVING Surveillance cameras identify people by the way they walk. Little Brother · est. 2030
- ARRIVING A wearable device lets you identify and size up the strangers around you in real time, pulling up who they are as you look at them. Super Sad True Love Story · est. 2031
The guide: Sci-Fi About Surveillance: 10 Stories About Being Watched, Scored and Recorded →
Minority Report Was Wrong About the Crime
Spielberg's film thought prediction would be used to catch us. It turned out to be far more profitable to finish us.
Good Afternoon, Good Evening, Good Night
Peter Weir's comedy about a man who is the last to know he's on television predicted almost everything about the next thirty years, except that we'd climb into the dome by choice.
Rewind Is Not a Cure
Jesse Armstrong's 44-minute marriage autopsy is the best thing in Black Mirror's first series, and its gadget is now a feature you can switch on in Windows settings.
No Escape Key
Apple's office horror is the most beautiful thing ever made about a cubicle, and its sharpest prophecy has nothing to do with the chip in Mark's head.
Minority Report
Spielberg's sleekest machine is a chase film with a philosophy degree, and it predicted almost everything except where we'd be looking.
Your Number Arrives Before You Do
Gary Shteyngart's 2010 satire got the pendant, the feed and the ranking almost exactly right, then staged the end of America as a bank run that never came.
Real Time Costs Extra
Kathryn Bigelow's millennium-eve thriller invented a machine that records memories, then accidentally predicted the far more important device in every bystander's pocket.
Pastel Is a Threat Level
Black Mirror's prettiest hour imagined one glowing score for every human being. We built a thousand small ones instead, and hid most of them.
The Eyelash Always Testifies
Andrew Niccol's gorgeous, schematic debut guessed the technology almost exactly and cast the wrong villain. The gatekeeper turned out to be the parents.
Gravel in Your Shoes
Cory Doctorow wrote his teenage hacker novel in eight furious weeks in 2007. It's half thriller, half instruction manual, and the manual is the part that came true.
The Statue Doesn't Move
Alex Garland's quantum-computer miniseries is the most beautiful thing on this list and the most inert. Its machine is impossible, but its tech campus is exactly right.
Right About Everything, Except People
Dave Eggers's campus satire predicted the doorbell camera, the genealogy dragnet and the single login, and still reads like a lecture delivered through a megaphone.
More themes: AI and machine minds · Space · Climate and scarcity · Pandemics and collapse · Borders and migration · Clones and genetics · Grief and technology · Memory · Work