Seeking a 1950s sf short story, probably by a notable author, that presaged a panopticon-esque surveillance society. My google-fu pride is injured that I can't find a trace of it.
The latest
webcam hijinks story spurs me to finally ask the hivemind.
OK, the premise of the story is that the protagonist buys a new television set and brings it home. At home, he discovers a hidden channel that is showing, well, call it reality TV. Someone going about their lives in their apartment (it had an urban setting, probably New York). The new owner is fascinated by this (soundless?) show, and introduces at least a couple of people to it, until he discovers something awful. It turns out the television he purchased
comes with a built-in camera. In fact, every television sold by this store does! Each television is at once a window into the world of at least one other purchaser, and showing that purchaser to someone else. And of course, the TVs have been an enormous hit.
Desperate, he tries to return his set to the store where he bought it, but it turns out the sales contract is also a performance contract, and ironclad. (Or something. I don't think the store vanished or anything mysterious like that, ruling out a Bradbury-type fantasy.) The final scene, possibly prompted by the news that there are now multiple brands of these two-way TVs, or headlines exposing the capability that instead of causing revolt cause a run on the devices, has the dejected hero commiserating with a male relative (uncle? why has that stayed with me?), who laments, approximately, "Welcome to the fishbowl."
I'm pretty certain that was the ending, and the phrasing there should be pretty close, but I've been searching for this a couple of years and haven't turned up anything remotely close. I've even used broad resources like
TVTropes or this
semi-academic survey of the topic, to no avail. Numerous "likely" sf author bibliographies have been perused.
I read sf endlessly as a kid. This almost certainly predates 1975 and the story had a 1950s, TV-being-new feel. It doesn't seem to be in Dangerous Visions, but it would have fit in a 1950s version of that anthology for sure -- it definitely evoked that feeling of dread, and was thus a bit out of step with its (as I recall) era. I do have a feeling it may even have been a short-short, although not necessarily Fredric Brown short. I don't now, and in many cases never did, own the anthologies, and have no memory of it being a single- or multiple-author book.
Any fans of classic sf out there with better memories than I?
Bonus question: Very much related, there was a story that was, I believe, in OMNI about a rural town (Iowa? Nebraska? Kansas?) that wired itself up with television cameras and became, before the term existed, a reality show. (Pretty sure it was inspired by things like
An American Family, as was the later reality genre itself.) Soon the travails of every resident became national fodder, such as minor disputes between family members, or the "secret" affair. The story had at least one female main character who was very upset by the situation but again, was bound by a contract to participate. This story may have ended in tragedy, like a suicide.
Just like the other story, this seems very relevant to our current times, but seems to be lost to history if Google (or at minimum my ability to trawl it) is any indication. Again, particularly due to the OMNI part of my memory, this would have been a notable author.
I found this website by googling sci fi anthology "The tv is watching you".
posted by themanwho at 2:25 AM on January 26