Howdy,

What would be a short story to explore the growing lack of privacy?

I have 2 general ideas:

1. Keep it focused on the person in the park

2. Find a story where the world is tracking everything

I’m leaning towards the person in the park, because it’s easier to add a simple story on top of that. Option 2 seems a little harder. I need to figure out the world and find a story in that world.

But let’s play around with both ideas today.

The basic idea is that any time someone goes to a park or public place they are tracked. To express this, a person will be at the park watching. Different events and people will change the personality of the watching person.

I imagine a story would start off with the person being a friendly stranger (let’s call the person Pete). Pete says hi and calling 911 when you collapse. However, Pete starts to change. Soon, Pete is trying to sell you products and knows things about you that you haven’t mentioned to Pete. It’s election season now and Pete is constantly monitoring you and giving you weird political information. There’s been robberies in the area so Pete loses his chill. Completely stalking you. Clearly, Pete would help spy for the police and have race play a factor in his actions.

Something that makes this idea hard would be how should Pete be shown to be surveillance technologies. Would Pete be known to be a piece of technology from the start or would that be a surprise? How could you make it natural and not jarring?

If I want to highlight the creepiness of a world that tracks everything, the story has to involve a character who wants to be alone or forget about something.

A quick idea would be Fred loses someone (grandparent, friend, lover, idk). They want time to process it alone and want a way to distract themselves from what happened. Their friends know this. They talk and give them space. However, all of their devices all learn this and try to exploit this. They get ads for funeral services or mental health services. They get photo and video recommendations that show the lost person or ways to get over. They get scams.

In a way I want the story to focus on grief. Friends and family are there to support. These devices start off seeming like a friends and family. But they aren’t. Their motive is not to make you feel better and to empathize, rather, the devices want your money. They will know you’ve lost someone by data (you and your family) and use that information to exploit you.

This idea also doesn’t have to be in the future. This could be right now.

I like this story. I’m also curious to expand how the tracking could start to track everything. When else would I want to be alone? Or not tracked? Spending time with others rather than dealing with an app?

Something I noticed after writing through some ideas is there are some patterns with both ideas. Using technologies to monitor has some upside and it is important to show this upside at the start of the story (Pete saves someone’s life and there’s connivence in having technology try to help you after a tough time). However, you can then get to the creepy bits. I think it’s also important to show the direct harm.

I liked this exercise today.

Bye,

Lucas

Howdy,

What would be a short story to explore the growing lack of privacy?

I have 2 general ideas:

1. Keep it focused on the person in the park

2. Find a story where the world is tracking everything

I’m leaning towards the person in the park, because it’s easier to add a simple story on top of that. Option 2 seems a little harder. I need to figure out the world and find a story in that world.

But let’s play around with both ideas today.

The basic idea is that any time someone goes to a park or public place they are tracked. To express this, a person will be at the park watching. Different events and people will change the personality of the watching person.

I imagine a story would start off with the person being a friendly stranger (let’s call the person Pete). Pete says hi and calling 911 when you collapse. However, Pete starts to change. Soon, Pete is trying to sell you products and knows things about you that you haven’t mentioned to Pete. It’s election season now and Pete is constantly monitoring you and giving you weird political information. There’s been robberies in the area so Pete loses his chill. Completely stalking you. Clearly, Pete would help spy for the police and have race play a factor in his actions.

Something that makes this idea hard would be how should Pete be shown to be surveillance technologies. Would Pete be known to be a piece of technology from the start or would that be a surprise? How could you make it natural and not jarring?

If I want to highlight the creepiness of a world that tracks everything, the story has to involve a character who wants to be alone or forget about something.

A quick idea would be Fred loses someone (grandparent, friend, lover, idk). They want time to process it alone and want a way to distract themselves from what happened. Their friends know this. They talk and give them space. However, all of their devices all learn this and try to exploit this. They get ads for funeral services or mental health services. They get photo and video recommendations that show the lost person or ways to get over. They get scams.

In a way I want the story to focus on grief. Friends and family are there to support. These devices start off seeming like a friends and family. But they aren’t. Their motive is not to make you feel better and to empathize, rather, the devices want your money. They will know you’ve lost someone by data (you and your family) and use that information to exploit you.

This idea also doesn’t have to be in the future. This could be right now.

I like this story. I’m also curious to expand how the tracking could start to track everything. When else would I want to be alone? Or not tracked? Spending time with others rather than dealing with an app?

Something I noticed after writing through some ideas is there are some patterns with both ideas. Using technologies to monitor has some upside and it is important to show this upside at the start of the story (Pete saves someone’s life and there’s connivence in having technology try to help you after a tough time). However, you can then get to the creepy bits. I think it’s also important to show the direct harm.

I liked this exercise today.

Bye,

Lucas