I See You

'''Knight, Damon. "I See You."' Fantasy and Science Fiction'' November 1976. Cited, contextualized, and discussed in Stephen Baxter, "The Technology of Omniscience: Past Viewers in Science Fiction," p. 104; we have also consulted an on-line excerpt from a review in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November, 1976, by "Steve," who may be Stephen Baxter.

The inciting action is the accidental invention of "a remote viewer called the Ozo. Its accidental inventor immediately understands its implications and [...] develops and markets the machine, and steadily works through its applications," including history, evolutionary biology, crime fighting, "undermining repressive governments and military surveillance." And "voyeurism" (Baxter, p. 104).

That's the first strand of the story, Baxter notes a second strand, with another implication: written in the second person (note title), about "you" in this brave new world without crime or war "and taboos are an academic study." But at middle age there may be an insight "and you become aware that you are but one of an infinite regress, watching the watched" (Baxter, p. 104).

See for surveillance and the philosophical and psychological implications of living in a kind of total panopticon.

RDE, Initial Compiler, 19Mar19