SPEAKER_05: Amazing, fascinating stories of inventions, ideas and innovations. Yes, this is the podcast about the things that have helped to shape our lives. Podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising.
SPEAKER_00: Hello, I'm Emma Twin. I'm a virtual twin for Dassault Système. My job, simulate multiple medical conditions on myself to develop new treatments for all. Basically, I'm like a crash test dummy for healthcare. It may sound like science fiction, but in fact, it's just science. I explain it all on my LinkedIn account. Look up Emma Twin from Dassault Système.
SPEAKER_04: 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy with Tim Harford
SPEAKER_01: Peenemünde is a sand spit in northern Germany where the River Peine meets the Baltic Sea. There, in October 1942, German engineers sat in a control room watching a television screen. It showed live, close-up images of a prototype weapon on its launch pad, some 2.5km away. They counted down. On another screen, with a wide-angle view, they saw the weapon surge skywards. The test had succeeded. They were looking at something that would shape the future, but perhaps not in the way they imagined. The V2, the fair Geltungswaffe, the vengeance weapon, was supposed to win Hitler the war. It was the world's first rocket-powered bomb. It travelled faster than the speed of sound, so you didn't know it was coming until it exploded. But, crucially, it couldn't be targeted precisely. The V2s killed thousands, but not enough to tip the scales of conflict. Werner von Braun, the brilliant young engineer behind the V2, surrendered to the American as the Third Reich fell, then helped them win the space race. If you had told him that his rocket test would be the first step towards putting a man on the moon, he wouldn't have been surprised. That's exactly what motivated him. But von Braun might not have anticipated that he was also witnessing the birth of another hugely influential technology. Closed-circuit television, or CCTV. The pictures in that control room were the first example of a video feed being used not for broadcasting but for real-time monitoring in private over a closed circuit. The top brass at Peenemünde worked slave labourers to their deaths, but they had no intention of joining the fatalities. They invited television engineer Walter Bruch to devise a way for them to monitor the launches from a safe distance. And that was wise, because the first V2 they tested did indeed blow up, destroying one of Bruch's cameras. Exactly how popular Bruch's brainchild has now become is tricky to pin down. One estimate, a few years old, puts the number of surveillance cameras around the world at 245 million. That's about one for every 30 people. Another reckons they'll soon be over twice that number in China alone. It's clear that the market is expanding quickly. And its global leader is a company called Hikvision, part-owned by the Chinese government. What is China doing with all these CCTV cameras? Here's one example. Picture the scene. You're trying to cross a busy road in the city of Zhanjiang. You should wait for the lights to change. But you're in a hurry, so you make a dash for it, weaving through the traffic. A few days later, you might see your photo, name and government ID number on a huge electronic billboard above the intersection, outing you as a jaywalker. But it's not just about the public shaming. Surveillance cameras will feed into the country's planned social credit scheme. Exactly how the national system will work remains unclear, but various trials are using both public and private sector data to score people on whether they're a good citizen. You might lose points for driving inconsiderately, paying your bills late or spreading false information. Score high and perks might include free use of public bikes. Score low and you might be banned from taking trains. The aim is to incentivise desired behaviour or, as an official document poetically puts it, allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step. Perhaps this is reminding you of a certain novel, published seven years after Walter Bruch pioneered the surveillance camera. In 1984, George Orwell imagined life when everything is monitored, not only in public spaces but in people's homes. Everyone who's anyone must have a telescreen through which Big Brother can watch them. But there's a hint in the story that these devices were originally something people chose to buy. When the duplicitous Mr Charrington needs to give Winston a believable reason for the apparent lack of telescreen in his spare room, he says they were too expensive and I never seemed to feel the need of it. That sounds like the kind of conversation I've had recently about the voice-controlled smart speakers that some of the world's largest corporations would like to sell me. So I can ask about the weather or say, Alexa, turn up my central heating or automatically monitor what's in my fridge. The comic artist, Zach Wienersmith, sums up the value proposition.
SPEAKER_02: Devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home have taken off because of advances in artificial
SPEAKER_01: intelligence. And that's the same reason behind the burgeoning demand for CCTV cameras. There are only so many screens one person can look at, but if software can watch and listen and decipher meaning, how much surveillance you can do is limited only by computing power. Is it reasonable to feel a little queasy about this? Or should we sit back and enjoy our drone-delivered cheese balls? That depends in part on the extent to which we trust the entities that are surveilling us. Amazon and Google hasten to reassure us that they aren't snooping on all our conversations. The devices themselves are just smart enough to listen for when you're saying the wake word. Alexa. Or OK Google. And only then do they send audio to the cloud for more powerful servers to decipher what we want. Then we have to trust that these devices are hard to hack for criminals and perhaps for governments. Of course, not everyone bawks at the thought of the state knowing more and more about our daily lives. One Chinese woman told Australia's ABC that if, as her government said, every corner of public space was installed with cameras, she'd feel safe. Those who take a different view might be glad to know that CCTV isn't yet as smart as it seems. The intersection in Jiang Yang appears entirely automated, but actually the face recognition algorithms aren't reliable enough. Government workers are sifting through the footage. But maybe that doesn't matter. The perception of surveillance is enough to deter. Fewer people are jaywalking. That's the idea of the panopticon. If you think you might be being watched, you'll always act as though you are. It's an idea George Orwell understood perfectly.
SPEAKER_04: We learned about the origins of CCTV in Albert Abramson's book, The History of Television, 1942 to 2000. For a full list of our sources, please see bbcworldservice.com slash 50things.
SPEAKER_03: We don't have to be afraid now. Look at us. And real life too. This is maybe the first lead of evidence we have in almost 48 years. Amazing stories. They hugged me and they started crying. They squeezed me and they were crying. From all over our sphere. There's nothing
SPEAKER_00: that you can't do in this world if you set your mind to it. Shall we do it all again
SPEAKER_03: next year?
