Satellite technology now means that potentially, every human being on the Earth can be observed, at least while outdoors. There are echoes of this in a poem from poem from The New Republic (8 August)

Distribution
by Victoria Chang

It might be anything: cowries, eggs, pigs, hoes.
In Bangalore, they use dry fruit, in Iceland,

dried fish-a horse shoe for one fish, a pair
of woman’s shoes for three, casket of butter for

one-hundred twenty. The paper dollar on my desk
has value because we think it does.

The antelope against the barren hills is running
across the field because we think it is.

Satellites hang in space to spy on the French man
tilling his field, the Russian man filling jam jars

with florets of fruit, the Chinese man opening
his palm of starfish. A science experiment gone

according to plan, the laboratory-us. The problem:
one earth, one football field, one home

in the suburbs, too many of us. What if there is not
enough grass to trample, and the rain never cleans

the streets, just pushes things around, like a broom
sweeping in a room with no door?