Orwell Everywhere All At Once - Interview with Mike Hawkes

Orwell Everywhere All At Once - Interview with Mike Hawkes

June 19, 2026 · 1h 23m · Season 2 · Episode 16

About this episode

The episode discusses the evolution of surveillance and its implications for privacy and communication in the modern world.

Surveillance has evolved from intercepting what people deliberately communicate to detecting what they involuntarily reveal. Who controls these capabilities? Can legislation and oversight keep pace? And what happens when surveillance no longer requires us to communicate or even carry a device? CTO and Inventor Mike Hawkes returns to the Collators to trace the evolution of surveillance from the earliest days of radio interception to a world of smartphones, mesh networks, and Wi-Fi routers. We also discuss the growing gap between collecting information and understanding it, and whether we are about to use AI to charge into an Orwellian situation?

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