Ten-Four

Abstract

This story is an appropriation/erasure of George Orwell’s 1984, remixing some of its original text with concepts from popular fiction and academic literature, including my published work. These concepts include: lateral surveillance; pandemic policing; data capitalism; predictive policing; and posthuman. The story contributes to the diverse, expanding field of cultural production known as “speculative fiction… a mode of thought-experimenting” (Oziewicz 2017). Rather than trying to predict the future, speculative fiction “unsettles the present” with what-if questions that allow us to “develop alternative social imaginaries and open up new perspectives” and “spaces of debate” (Dunne and Raby 2013: chapters 88, 189, 3).