Suzanne Young's The Program Analysis

Imagine trying to always have your emotions hidden in order to keep your memories intact. The Program is a science fiction novel written by Suzanne Young. It is set in the future and is about how an epidemic of suicidal teens spreads across the globe. Over time, this epidemic gets so terrible, that the government develops a program to prevent suicide. This program erases most of the nostalgic memories of the people that go there. In this novel, a resilient girl named Sloane Barstow is the protagonist. Therefore, Sloane must do everything in her power to prevent this program from erasing her most precious memories. The conflict and theme of The Program help to make the plot intense and interesting.

According to “A Surveillance Society” By William E. Thompson there are camera everywhere, watching everything you do at all times. Cameras are found everywhere and are used by everyone, including the governments of the world who use it the most to track its citizens and potential threats to the safety of their nation. People are more willing to be watched in order to feel safer everywhere they go such as the supermarket to your own workplace. Governments can now look into your email, travel records, credit history and your personal life without your knowledge of them ever doing so, even your neighbors can now easily buy tools to spy on others or to protect themselves from danger; Things such as security cameras

The government is always watching to ensure safety of their country, including everything and everyone in it. Camera surveillance has become an accepted and almost expected addition to modern safety and crime prevention (“Where” para 1). Many people willingly give authorization to companies like Google and Facebook to make billions selling their personal preferences, interests, and data. Canada participates with the United States and other countries in monitoring national and even global communications (“Where” para 2). Many question the usefulness of this kind of surveillance (Hier, Let, and Walby 1).However, surveillance, used non-discriminatorily, is, arguably, the key technology to preventing terrorist plots (Eijkman 1). Government

Everyone has always wondered if people were ever watching them. Our technology today is capable to eavesdrop in on anyone’s conversations even if their phones are turned off. In the novel, “1984”, the party INGSOC uses telescreens to watch over the people and always know what they are up to. This denies the people’s rights and privileges to go about their business as they please. The technology we have today is almost exact to what big brother uses in George Orwell’s novel by taking over the public and private parts of our lives.

Historically, surveillance came in the form of a watch tower, designed to watch out for danger in order to protect citizens. In a more recent context, the implementation has evolved now to supervise the citizens in order to watch out for danger. The modern “watch tower” does not occupy the same physical space as its predecessor and does not impress by its height, but rather, impresses by its seemingly omnipresent eye in all channels of society and its reach into the lives of individuals, but that reach is only enough to protect very specific dangers. Although mass surveillance portrays itself as proficient in preventing threats to a collective, Nikki Giovanni’s “Surveillance” reveals her mother’s physical abuse and, as a result, the dissonance

1984, a novel by George Orwell, represents a dystopian society in which the people of Oceania are surveilled by the government almost all the time and have no freedoms. Today, citizens of the United States and other countries are watched in a similar way. Though different technological and personal ways of keeping watch on society than 1984, today’s government is also able to monitor most aspects of the people’s life. 1984 might be a dystopian society, but today’s condition seems to be moving towards that controlling state, where the citizens are surveilled by the government at all times.

In the novel 1984, by George Orwell, there is a society that has become a negative utopia, in where there is a party named Big Brother that watches over all of its people at all times using mainly their invention of the telescreen. Likewise, many people have phones, computers, tablets, and even televisions that have functions such as a camera and video usages. Companies that create these products have credibility and the trust of the public that they would not use the cameras on their phone for surveillance and that's where people seem to be fine with the whole thing. Another thing to be worried about is also public cameras or street cameras which can monitor groups of

George Orwell’s novel 1984 reflects on the society of dystopian city Airstrip 1 where main character Winston Smith lives. Along with the many other citizens, Winston is controlled by the Inner Party by constantly being monitored via telescreens that keep sight of everybody and their actions. Besides using telescreens the government also easily arrests people in any case of “thoughtcrime” which consists of any thoughts that regard disobedience towards the government. Thoughtcrime and telescreens are two of the several factors that reflect the extreme surveillance in 1984. Orwell uses surveillance as the central theme of the novel to spread his idea that the usage of more extreme surveillance could eventually lead to a totalitarian society. On a less extreme scale, today’s society also has a significant amount of surveillance but many question whether or not more surveillance is necessary. With the many current text sources, it is certain that we need less surveillance in order to keep a stable society that does not take away the individualism of people.

“Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves”(Reagan). In the book, 1984, Winston recognizes the power the government has over the citizens of Oceania. The citizens lack privacy from the government. George Orwell warns society about a government with total control in 1984. Based on Dana Hawkin’s article, “Cheap Video Cameras Are Monitoring Our Every Move”, as well as Beech Etal’s, “The Other Side of the Great Firewall”, society may truly have something to fear in the form of surveillance and information manipulation.

Surveillance is not a new thing. In fact, espionage, tracking, and sleuthing were part of society ever since 5000 B.C. But in the rise of the modern era, the idea of surveillance in the public eye serves as a controversial topic of discussion. People everywhere complain about the existence of security cameras, government tracking, and the right to privacy. Such problems, however, are not due to the sudden discovery of surveillance, but the modern abuse of it. Seeing the disastrous effects of over surveillance from George Orwell’s 1984, the public rightfully fears societal deterioration through modern surveillance abuse portrayed in Matthew Hutson’s “Even Bugs Will Be Bugged” and the effects of such in Jennifer Golbeck’s “All Eyes On You”. The abuse of surveillance induces the fear of discovery through the invasion of privacy, and ensures the omnipresence of one’s past that haunt future endeavors, to ultimately obstruct human development and the progress of society overall.

The main version of this surveillance is through the telescreen that is stationed in every room constantly watching the people. There is always propaganda across the screen supporting Big Brother and the endeavors of Ingsoc. The telescreen combined with the thought police is the ultimate tool for destroying individual thought, "The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide" (Orwell). This non-stop flow of information stimulates everyone to join in with the demands of Big Brother even when they do not want to. Even the telescreens and Thought Police are not enough because the people are faced with the omnipresent signs reading "BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU," that are constantly scrutinizing them.

Life inevitably has its rough patches, but it's how people deal with those obstacles that mold their sense of right from wrong. Ultimately, this leads to a spiral in the decision-making process, sometimes causing their decisions to no longer reflect their morals. In an attempt to glue things back together to the proper way they once were, morals are sometimes cast aside to rehabilitate society or the beloved people within the society, no matter what misery the people have to endure in order to get to that point. In The Program, Suzanne Young uses cultural, physical, and geographical surroundings to shape psychological and moral traits of Sloane as she attempts to defeat the epidemic and The Program, to protect the memories of herself and others

The program that this student has designed and will test will not be in a “corporate” type building, it will be conducted within a classroom inside of a public school. This program will be centered on the idea in which both teachers and school administrators come together in helping to truly create a better future through their students, our future. In this classroom volunteers, teachers and therapists will meet to discuss the performance of children in that school. These volunteers would also help collect food and distribute this food to the children in need and their families. This classroom would be the base for educating both teachers and school administrators about healthy boundary crossings, such as when is it appropriate

The west is considered to be a “ free market”, though the reality of this is a common misconception. Though technically anyone can work there way to the top and become part of the “1%”, it is very difficult for the other 99% of us to achieve that (Martin Hirst, 2014). Though there is no censorship in Canada, there is a great deal of surveillance. The reasoning and justification behind this is to be able to monitor who is a threat and who is not. Through the monitoring, people are divided and categorized. It is then from this process that the state beings to practice “narrowcasting”. This installs a certain way of thinking for the public, thus making it easier for them to accept the idea of surveillance. It is in times where people feel that they are threatened that it is

For most people suicide is seen as a very shocking and uncommon event in daily life. But, in Suzzanne Young's The Program, suicide is an epidemic wiping out thousands of teens worldwide every day. The only way people have figured out how to stop the epidemic is with the use of The Program. The Program has handlers that flag any depressed teenager they see, input them into The Program, and wipe any memory they have that could lead them back into depression, which most of the time, seems to be almost all of their memories. In The Program, Suzzanne Young uses the social, emotional and psychical surroundings Sloane deals with to explore how The Program has shaped her psychological traits to lead her to rebel against The Program.