Juvenal Notebook

"Who will watch the watchers?" - Juvenal

Penned in 100 AD, Juneval’s most memorable quotation is a prescient warning about the unchecked power of overlords. Did he wax a little dramatic-slash-paranoid? Fair enough. But this observation feels more relevant than ever. 

Whether it’s big government, big tech, big pharma, big data, or any of the other bigs, we ignore Juvenal's question at our own peril. 

Has big tech merged into one giant, all-seeing, algorithmic eye that tracks our interactions, maps our social networks and locations, monitors our vitals, then analyzes, packages and sells that data to the other bigs? 

Have the other bigs formed one bigger big? Or have we binge-watched too much Black Mirror?

Being constantly wired in is new to human beings, and we derive our best guesses regarding its detrimental effects from dystopian literature and totalitarian governments. 

Neither of which is comforting.

In our illustration, a group of dazed individuals bask in the light of their screens, their shadows casting avatars into a cloud of ones and zeros. The human hive forms the shape of a giant panopticon-like eye, peering curiously through the print into your house. 

• Proudly made in Portland Oregon
• Offset printed with vegetable-based inks
• Cover: 18pt recycled chipboard made from recycled content & books
• Inside: 32 college ruled pages, uncoated 70# paper milled in America
• 85% post-consumer recycled content and 15% pre-consumer recycled content.
• Saddle stitched with matching staples
• All presses and production machinery powered with renewable energy