Bourne to make a laugh
Jason Bourne, the new sequel to the apparently never-ending Matt Damon spy-thriller franchise, features a moment so utterly ridiculous and bizarre that it provoked spontaneous, theatre-wide laughter when I saw it in a cinema.
Here’s what happens: Aaron Kalloor, a wealthy Palo Alto tech magnate modelled fairly transparently on Mark Zuckerberg, is delivering some kind of industry keynote to a room full of reporters and media types. He’s just announced Deep Dream, his company’s new social media platform, which he describes (vaguely) as an all-in-one recommendation engine that tracks its users’ behaviours and preferences in order to personalize their experience.
At this there’s some not-so-enthusiastic murmuring from his audience. Kalloor is on it. “I can see some pens twitching from the journalists in the room,” he says. “You want to ask about privacy.” “Yeah, yeah!” shout the attendees in unison. Privacy is important, the software’s broad reach is disconcerting, nobody wants to be watched. So, our plucky magnate addresses the concern: “I’m pleased to report,” Kallor says, smiling, “that you will not be watched.” The room erupts instantly in applause.
Hold on a minute. That’s all? This guy is poised to launch a platform with the capacity to surveil every person in the nation, a platform that could radically impinge on rights and freedoms accorded to every man and woman in the country, and a one-sentence promise is enough to completely assuage a room of professional journalists?
No one even has a follow up question? Even assuming they have no reason to doubt this guy — why applaud? What did they expect him to say? That he fully intended to steal everyone’s data and sell it to the government wholesale? Of course it turns out that Aaron is, in fact, planning to sell this data to the government, which we learn in the very next scene, when he meets the director of the CIA. So much for integrity! “Do you have any idea the hot water I’d be in if this little agreement went public?” Aaron asks gravely.
If applause is what you get for simply saying that everybody’s data will be protected, I’m not sure this would be much of a problem. Supposing this arrangement did leak, he could just assure another crowd of reporters that it will never happen again. He’d probably receive a second standing ovation.