<em>Minority Report </em>Tried to Warn Us About Technology

In Minority Report, when the detective John Anderton goes on the run in Washington, D.C., one of the first things he needs to do is swap out his eyes. The police of Steven Spielberg’s film, set in 2054, are not the only ones tracking people with eye-scanning machines mounted around the city. Public transit does so too, as does every business, and even all the billboards, which scream slogans such as “John Anderton! You could use a Guinness right about now!” as he walks by them.

That tracking system is the most mundanely frightening part of the film’s surveillance-state future, in which you might be arrestedrecently, in a time when every social-media app I use seems to be listening to and anticipating my wants and desires, the gag sent a new chill up my spine.