TV series “The Prisoner” explored a number of fascinating themes but one that has been interesting to revisit over the years is how each wave of technological advancement has brought us closer to its vision from 50 years ago of the disturbing potential of such capabilities.

The 1960’s show saw the protagonist, Number 6, kidnapped and held captive in a beautiful but unsettling place called “The Village”. Filmed in the stunning setting of Portmeirion it soon became clear that this was no ordinary or harmless place.

surveillance tech

A few minutes after awaking in his new surroundings he encounters an electronic display and presses the button for “Taxi Rank”. Within the same second, a Taxi arrives.

We quickly learn that weather-beaten statues have concealed cameras to monitor his every move outdoors. His living quarters are continuously filmed and streamed live to his captors.

Although such rapid responses and discrete, real-time intrusion would have been impossible at the time, there is commonplace affordable techonolgy now mimicking this capability. In the UK we are all now closely monitored by CCTV, with a network of cameras in cities, towns (and villages) streaming our movements to control rooms. FaceTime delivers 2-way video broadcasting via a 4mm camera, replicating what was at the time, a futuristic novelty in the ‘Free for All’ episode.

Granted, Taxi’s aren’t as instantaneous as the Mini Moke just yet but Uber have built a global company by being only a few minutes adrift.

transport tech

An early attempt to escape in a helicopter is foiled when the manual controls are overtaken remotely to return No 6 back to the Village. The parallels with autopilot in planes and the recent leaps with driver-less cars are obvious. Human control can be overridden if the technology detects a “dangerous” action.

But what if the tech in future is programmed to avoid a “disagreeable” action, such as driving too close to Buckingham Palace? Or the White House? Or as in the first episode “Arrival”, escaping The Village? And if so, who decides?

The similarities between “The Rover”, the weaponised balloon used to pinpoint and subdue adversaries of The Village and military drones is the most sinister realisation out of all of the things that have come to pass.

Yet today’s technology is unlikely to be the final stopping point in the unrelentless march of ‘progress’.

Last year at the UN’s Convention on Conventional Weapons, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots presented their own disturbing view of what will be the logical conclusion if the technology available today is married together (viewer discretion advised – violent content):

As should be expected 50 years later, the tech predicted for the near future is more sophisticated than what was propositioned by “The Rover” but that is missing the point. The aim of both is identical; locate the target and neutralise it.

privacy

The oppression experienced when living under constant surveillance provided by this invasive technology was a theme throughout the series. (It has even led some fans to suggest it resulted in No 6’s eventual mental breakdown that explained the final controversial episode, ‘Fall Out’.)

Yet despite this warning, most of us have given our privacy away cheaply.

In return we have benefitted from the convenience of having a portable phone that places cute ears on your pictures… And tracks your exact location in real time exactly like how the radar tracked number 6 as he moved about the Village.

data sniffing

The recent uproar regarding Cambridge Analaltica’s use of Facebook account data has alerted some to the danger of allowing so much personal information to be given up so freely. The suggestion is that collecting up to 87 million people’s data allowed them to target personalised advertising based on your ‘likes’ so powerfully as to possibly sway a U.S. election and the UK vote on Brexit.

If true then the predictive analytics employed in the first episode when No 2 accurately demonstrated that he knew No 6 would choose two eggs instead of one and tea rather than coffee for breakfast appear to be rather unambitious on reflection.

Whatever the accuracy of these claims, the resulting Twitter campaign to #DeleteFacebook has been a popular one with many accounts recently being culled. Elon Musk joined the call by deleting his company’s Facebook accounts that had over 5 million followers:

Yet despite recent signs of the growing awareness of privacy concerns, there are still others so unconcerned about the potential of their privacy being breached that they are now buying microphones that constantly listen in to their conversations.

The Amazon Echo and Google Home speakers are 21st Century versions of the speaker in the Prisoner’s living room that he smashes up after becoming frustrated with the constant intrusion into his life.

In order for these devices to work, they have to listen in 24-7 waiting to hear you say a key “Wake” word. They are therefore always “on”.

So should you be worried about such devices in the home?

According to Amazon themselves, you should. This week they confirmed that “an Echo device in Oregon sent private audio to someone on a user’s contact list without permission“.

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg taping over the microphone and camera on his own MacBook suggests he fears just how easily these features are being compromised:

Interestingly, for someone who has built a vast enterprise on collecting personal data, it was reported back in 2010 that in the early days of Facebook he couldn’t understand why people would voluntarily gave him so much of their own information. (His alleged comments on those that did were less than complimentary.)

Fall Out

Last year, the World’s largest website dedicated to the TV series, The Unmutual, held an auction for a Prisoner poster in aid of Ty Gobaith Children’s Hospice. The brilliant poster, created by renowned artist Chris Weston (2000AD, Batman, Superman, Star Wars: The Last Jedi) and generously donated by Vice Press, was print “No 6” out of a limited edition of 125.

This was a fantastic opportunity for Prisoner fans to own a unique piece from a collectable artist printed by top print studio Lady Lazurus. Luckily for me, my bid won the auction!

I promised to send a pic of it once framed to the man behind The Unmutual website, “Prisoner” historian and author Rick Davy and it was with a morbid sense of amusement as I tried to take a pic that I saw this:

The facial recognition software has become so sophisticated that it recognises 3 out of 4 faces on the artwork. Despite this being an illustration, the iPhone was still able to interpret ink markings as faces. I assume that it couldn’t detect the fourth person only because 40% of the face is in shadow and a large telephone obscures 1/3 of the facial outline. With technology like this, there would be no way for the Prisoner to ever escape the Village!

Rick emailed “How ironic that modern technology is using a poster for The Prisoner to show up the dangers that The Prisoner was actually warning us against!”

I suspect somewhere, a certain person is looking down with a wry smile.

And he’s saying “I did try to tell you…”

This poster will be on display alongside costumes, props and other memorabilia at the upcoming “Not a Number – A Patrick McGoohan Retrospective” event being held at Elstree Studios on 23rd June 2018.

Come along and test your phone against it!

Any profits from the event will be donated to Ty Gobaith Children’s Hospice. Their “how to help” page can be found here.

For latest announcements on guests please visit theunmutual.co.uk, the world’s largest website dedicated to The Prisoner.

Peter Horgan
IT Consultant (and when not writing tech blogs, composes Alternative Prisoner Theme Tunes…)

Originally composed for a computer game, the full story how this came about is here.

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