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Spence said he plans to become a "human surveillance machine" to explore privacy issues and whether people are "sleepwalking into an Orwellian society."

Spence, who jokingly calls himself "Eyeborg," told reporters at a media conference in Brussels that the camera hidden in a prosthetic eye — the same pale hazel color as his real one — would also let him capture more natural conversations than he would with a bulky regular camera. "As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact." But Spence also acknowledged privacy concerns. "The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said, adding people aren't sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time

"The rules have changed, and it's not just about social networking either," he said. "Right now, online, anything you do is being recorded. That's the default position you have to take … Whether you're blogging or using Twitter or even sending an e-mail, you have to assume that it will live forever. That's a fundamental shift in how we view our privacy." What's more, social networking sites might be the least dangerous, he said. By their very nature, users can share their complaints and push those who control the sites to make changes. The social networking services tend to be more open than many other online enterprises, he said. Any time you make a purchase over the Internet, for example, someone is probably compiling information about you. "The information is moving whether you know it or not," Costa said. "The thing about social networking is it tends to be more public, more out in the open. But people who aren't used to using instant messaging, or using Twitter, or Web pages and blogs still think of it as a little like letter writing or talking to friends.

The government's approach to the issue of privacy is not unlike a rat hooked on heroin. It just can't get enough of our personal information.

The government promises not to look at the content of messages themselves, and restrict itself to who communicates with whom. This seems ludicrous. If two terrorist suspects are emailing each other frequently, on Facebook or anywhere itself, it's difficult to believe security services won't try to discover the content of the messages. Somewhere in the legislation – either in an amendment to RIPA or a clause of the communications data bill – there will be a power, in 'exceptional circumstances' to read content. And 'exceptional circumstances' tend to become much less exceptional than originally intended.

It's such a lovely turn of phrase, that. If you suspect it, report it. Don't wait for evidence. Or question your own prejudices. If someone's not a "normal everyday person" exactly like you, then they could well be a member of al-Qaida. What flawless logic that is. We're already described as "a surveillance state" by Privacy International, one in five of all CCTV cameras ever made are currently in Britain, and Smith is drawing up plans to intercept every phone call we make and every email we send. The Taplins weren't snitches - they were perfect citizens in her New Model Army.

a conformity of living, of beliefs, aspirations and behaviour that is rigorously policed by family, friends and neighbours

if the property that grounded the self, in Romanticism, was sincerity, and in modernism it was authenticity, then in postmodernism it is visibility

Reading, as Robinson puts it, "is an act of great inwardness and subjectivity." "The soul encountered itself in response to a text, first Genesis or Matthew and then Paradise Lost or Leaves of Grass." With Protestantism and printing, the quest for the divine voice became available to, even incumbent upon, everyone.

The world was now understood as an assault on the self, and with good reason.