"Let me get you some help, Truman.
You're not well."
"Why do you want to have a baby with me?
You can't stand me."
"That's not true!
Why don't you let me fix you some of this new Mococoa drink?
All natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua, no artificial sweeteners!"
"What the hell are you talking about?
Who are you talking to?"
"I've tasted other cocoas.
This is the best."
"What the hell does this have to do with anything?
Tell me what's happening!"
"Well, you're having a nervous breakdown, that's what's happening."
"You're part of this, aren't you."
"Truman!"
"Meryl!"
"You are scaring me!"
"You're scaring me, Meryl.
What are you gonna do?
Dice me, slice me, or peel me?
There's so many choices!"
"Do something!"
"What?
What did you say?
Who are you talking to?"
"Nothing, I didn't say anything.
I didn't say anything."
"You said 'do something.'"
"No I didn't.
I wasn't talking to anybody."
"Talk to me!"
"I don't know anything! Please, stop!"
"Stay where you are."
"Truman?
Truman."
"Oh thank God, oh thank God.
How can anyone expect me to carry on under these conditions?
It's unprofessional!"
The Truman Show is a deeply symbolic film about the extensive and dehumanizing violations
of the right to privacy that are a hallmark of our era.
The movie addresses this human rights issue through a fictional story of a corporation that
adopts a human being in order to exploit every aspect of his personal life.
A key theme of The Truman Show is deceptive and coercive manipulation of a human being
to maximize profit for a corporation.
Through an intricate network of cameras and microphones, Truman's entire personal life
is recorded and broadcast to the world.
In this way, the film symbolically depicts the current corporate paradigm of mining personal
data online through a myriad of channels, from social networks to consumer purchases
to intelligent objects that record our every movement both inside and outside our home,
to firms engaged in endless data mining.
Moreover, as in the case of online data mining in our personal lives, the producers of The
Truman Show use what they know about the hero in order to manipulate him in ways that will
increase profits, in this case, through better ratings for the program.
"Hi, Christof, I was just wondering how many cameras you got there in that town?"
"Somewhere in the vicinity of 5,000."
"Oh.
Well that's a lot of cameras."
"Remember, we started with just one."
Just as Truman was born into a world of perpetual information collection, we ourselves live in
a society where we have no practical choice as members of a digital economy but to accept
the terms under which our personal data is collected, stored, and manipulated in a myriad
of ways that are hidden from our sight.
Companies capitalize by tracking our online activity through an expanding array of internet-connected
devices from smartphones to watches, cars, even appliances.
They both over-collect and over-retain all our personal information because of the enormous
profits they realize from doing both.
"That's correct."
"The show has generated enormous revenues, now, equivalent to the Gross National Product
of a small country."
"People forget it takes the population of an entire country to keep the show running."
"Since the show is on 24 hours a day without commercial interruption, all those staggering
revenues are generated by product placement."
"That's true.
Everything on the show is for sale, from the actors' wardrobe to food products to the very
homes they live in."
When our personal data is separated in this manner from our person,
it is vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
For example, health insurers can purchase information on people and alert client companies
of potential employees who could drive up companies' healthcare premiums.
"Morning, Truman!"
"Morning Spencer!"
At the very heart of The Truman Show is the symbolic representation of the insatiable
appetite for corporate data collection.
Everywhere Truman goes, there are cameras observing and recording his every move.
"This is about the great variable: when will death occur?
Could be a week, a month, a year.
Could be today.
Sunbather.
Minding his own business.
Stabbed in the heart by the tip of a runaway beach umbrella."
"Get me a paper there, will you Harold?"
In our digital world, the recording devices go far beyond cameras to every internet-connected
device imaginable.
For example, car companies such as Ford collect data through the devices in our cars, and
internet firms such as Google have purchased smoke alarm and fire alarm companies so that
they can monitor our activities in our homes.
"He's heading west on Steward.
Stand by all extras...
He'll be on you in about 90 seconds, Pops, make sure the coffee's hot.
Okay, he's making his turn onto Lancaster Square....Oh my God! He nearly hit Valerie. Something's wrong, change frequency."
"Ouch, sorry about that folks, I guess we picked up a police frequency or something.
It sometimes happens and it can drive you crazy."
Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the fundamental right
of all human beings to privacy.
This right applies to our personal data because it is an extension and expression of our person.
"I don't know what to think, Marlon.
Maybe I'm losing my mind, but...it feels like the whole world revolves around me somehow."
"That's a lot of world for one man, Truman.
You sure that's not wishful thinking?"
The Truman Show is a visionary movie that symbolically captures our era of privacy invasion and the
growing violation of this human right at the hands of a powerful corporate elite.
"Well, the point is, I'd gladly walk in front of traffic for you."
"The point is, I would gladly step in front of traffic for you, Truman."
"And the last thing I'd ever do is lie to you."
"And the last thing that I would ever do is lie to you."
When it was first released, few could have anticipated how its fictional symbolism would
foreshadow what is increasingly becoming a reality in our time.
In a sense, The Truman Show puts a name and a face on a story that we are all now living,
to a greater or lesser extent, in an era when corporate business models endlessly harvest
the data and information that define and express who we are as people.
Truman is us, and tragically his story is increasingly ours.