Ratcheting up the tension

Internationally acclaimed Kiwi playwright, film-maker and novelist Anthony McCarten brings his fascination for innovators and hot topics to a new form in his first thriller.

- CRAIG SISTERSON

The "first throb" of the idea came at a dinner party seven years ago, when the red wine was flowing and a group of 50-somethings were chatting about their increasingly tech-dominated lives. Stories were shared of spooky things happening, of receiving targeted ads relating not just to your recent internet browsing but also to private conversations that had taken place offline.

"I'm sure it may have happened to you, where you receive a pop-up ad on your phone suggesting that our devices may have been spying on us," says writer and film-maker Anthony McCarten. "Well, guess what, they have been. Our devices, although they're enabling great miracles to happen, on a moment-to-moment basis they're also working against us. Our data is being sold, our private behaviour monitored then even manipulated, without our knowledge and consent."

More than 160 years ago, Dickens wrote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." It introduced a tale set against the tumult and violence of the French Revolution in the late-18th century, but it seems equally applicable to our modern, technologically advanced times. We, too, live in an age of wisdom and foolishness.

"I'm old enough to remember a time when you could easily slip off the radar and avoid all influences, other than those you chose to let influence you," says McCarten. "I was a country kid and I used to escape my family and go up onto Mt Egmont, as it was known then, and no one knew where you were. But within my lifespan, we've seen technology making enormous inroads into our lives, a slow encroachment of unregulated surveillance and covert influence."

Privacy, and what it now means, has emerged as a major theme of our times, believes McCarten. "Are my views and attitudes even my own, or have I been sort of covertly influenced?"