It’s 2026, and we’re building up a surveillance society in earnest. A few years ago, I rewatched Enemy of the State. Released in 1998, just before the calendar rolled over into the new millennium, the film captured the late-century anxieties of a population concerned that they might be watching us. That the state would endeavor to adopt invasive surveillance laws at any price, and even track its own citizens with satellites and digital networks, was plausible but perhaps not inevitable. Three years later came the attacks of 9/11 and soon after the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT) Act. Soon after, the movie looked equal parts prescient and quaint.

Two and a half decades into the new century, we don’t need the state to surveil us, though it does. We’re perfectly happy to do it ourselves. That didn’t stop the National Security Agency from collecting internet and cellular data from around the world without a warrant, and when Edward Snowden broke the story, we at least feigned outrage for a time. But when the dust settled, we continued about our business, flying consumer drones, carrying cell phones with us into the washroom, sharing our data with every app and social media site on Al Gore’s internet, setting up cameras outside the entrances to our homes, and networking everything with a circuit. Now, in a bid to push the frontiers of voluntary surveillance, we’re putting cameras on our faces.