What if it becomes impossible
for people to trust?
Devices start to capture human data intensively & manipulate them using recommendation systems
After the 2024 Election in India, Indian National Party wins with the majority, due to its secret collaboration with Live Inc. company. The company secretly monitored & manipulated people using its high-tech futuristic data capturing & recommendation products. The country’s administration is now in 2031 is less powerful than the private corporation Live inc. which is planning to launch more similar products now to become the supreme power & manage the country’s population & productivity slyly using unfair means.
Amidst all this a diary of a missing person is found!
The news immediately breaks into the morning show!
Journal: A journal in which the protagonist Arya writes about his experiences in carrying out the investigations. This reveals the narrative progressively from his point of view.
Live Air: The journalist friend who gets the journal proposes broadcasting and publishing about it immediately for common people to avoid any further damage to them.
Artefacts Used in making the Found Object
Futuristic ID Card: Aadhar 10.0, which is printed on interactive paper (screen-like) that keeps updating constantly based on all of your current complex data analysis in the Government headquarters. It shows that collected data in general entities that matter the most in a society like Power, Health, Money & Status, Experience (color-coded based on several levels of jobs), etc.
Personal Data Capture & Recommendation Devices: Products that analyse data to provide better services & recommendations based on your preferences & suitability like Personalised medication, skincare, meal bar, etc.
Alternative Products used by the Second World people who mistrust Live Inc.:Another part of the population made some products by themselves for their use to avoid leaking of their data such as a physical bunch of keys, secure network generator, user manuals & locally printed medicine.
Live Inc. Test Laboratories photographs: Photos suggesting monitoring huge amounts of data of the test subject using the devices. A person is constantly monitored when he used the device & gets recommendations accordingly but the data captured is much more than required for giving that particular suggestion and the common people do not know about it.
Letters, Maps & Sketches: The writer also adds any evidences he finds to his journal and uses it to scribble his thoughts & sketchs out things.
Digital Version of Diary
Physical Version of Diary
Narrative Summary
A senior architect finds some suspicious activities happening around him, like the death of a client and accidentally who was getting threats from a company to sell his land to them & finding a whole new world of information after logging in to one of colleague’s ‘personal internet’ accidentally. He starts to investigate the company Live Inc. as both the events were connected to it.
He uses a traditional journal & a polaroid to make note of his investigations about the company. In this world, natural paper is banned as it needs recycling again & again which is harmful to the environment. People are forced to use only ‘interactive paper’ which is a special electronic paper that is the screen-like response to gestures, it can be easily cleared or stored. The protagonist, Arya Malhotra somehow knows that this paper actually interprets handwriting to a digital medium and which is constantly monitored by machines.
He browses the internet o find out about the beta tests and upcoming products by the company. He makes notes of it how it can positively or negatively affect the country's people. Next, he tries contacting some of his friends who work for Live Inc. One of the people he met for the same purpose was Ashish, who is his close friend since school. The company tracks his intentions & investigations & recommends him a pill for demotivating him. He initially suspects the pill coming in abruptly and thinks it might make him forget about the investigation, but still decides to consume it to uncover the mystery.
After, he did not find any clues from the employees he loses hope and starts doubting his idea of starting the investigation itself. He starts trusting the company a little as he notices that he did not have any instance of forgetting any stuff but he does not realize that he got demotivated to carry out the research itself due to that.
After some weeks pass by, he notices a ‘Broadcast’ mentioning a man who is against personalized medication recommendation device. This device is also produced by the same Coorporation Live Inc., it recommends pills to people without letting them know about the disease they have so that they do not overthink & stress about it. All the pills look the same and most people prefer it as they neither want the hassle to diagnose and get medicines or worry about having a disease.
But the man on the ‘Broadcast’ was claiming that the pills were worsening his health. This surprised Arya as they never show disturbing news on ‘Broadcast’ and this also influenced him to carry out his investigations about the corporation further.
Arya tries to sketch the man’s face, notes down his name, i.e. Dr. A. K. Sen and tries to figure out his location based on what he saw, like near Government Station no, Right turn, first blue building, second floor, the fourth door from the staircase, etc. He decides to go and visit him in New Delhi & try to get more information from him.
The next day he meets the man, initially, he was secretive but after Arya shows him his journal, he starts to believe him and expresses his concerns. He tells him that he once managed to sneak into the Live Inc. headquarters in Central Vista. He captured some images on his polaroid. He also found some blueprints of the H.Q. which he later handed to Arya. He also finds about this community in the second world that hesitates sharing any of their data, because they know about the consequences. Arya finds out about some of the self-made services & devices they use to maintain their privacy.
When Arya comes back home, he finds a letter from Ashish mentioning their last meet. He tells him that he knows about the Corporation’s influence & therefore could not tell him anything at that point. He also asks him to stop taking the pills as they would eventually kill him. He mentions how he was able to pull some strings to make him reach Dr. A. K. Sen, who could help him in his investigation. Now, Ashish has left the country has he mentions that the corporations got to know about his deeds and he also mentions the concern that there may be several other monitoring products which he doesn’t know of. After some time, Arya notices the news about the heavy increase in the younger population in the country and suspects it to be Corporation’s influence using personalized medication.
Eventually, the corporation gets to know about Arya, he leaves his place and hides away for a week or so. After he manages to plan an exit from the country he leaves the journal at the doorstep of an old friend, who is also a journalist.
The friend finds the journal in the morning when she was just about to have a virtual meeting. She reads the diary and figures out that she should tell about this to her colleagues as this information should be immediately published & broadcasted