Jacobs Langdon: A couple of places. When I was a kid, there was this show on TV called Lost, and I wouldn’t miss a single episode. It was incredible. Great storyline, engrossing; it had a tremendous influence on my later ideas. I really loved the idea of a group of people facing the unknown, facing adversity, and trying to cope as best they could. Of course, at the same time, the War on Terror was only a few years old, and Guantanamo was still routinely in the headlines so I guess you can see some of that in there, too. There were a few other things, like the Stanford Prison Experiment that was later used to make the German film Das Experiment, old sci-fi films like The Running Man, uh, even 24. Yeah, there were loads of these little influences I could mention, but if I had to pick out one thing that really inspired me to do The Camp, it would have to be an old Japanese game show from the late nineties called Denpa Shonen.

MG: Never heard of it.

JL: [laughs] I’d be surprised if you did! It wasn’t really known outside of Japan. I only found out about it watching some re-run of an old “Top 10 Reality Shows” programme or something that I stumbled across during a data sediment dive. I started digging around for more info, and the more I learnt, the more I was just completely stunned.

What the makers did was they had an audition for a bunch of people on the pretext of being picked for some show-biz related job. The guy who got picked, Nasubi, was a small-time comedian, and they promptly blindfolded him, basically kidnapped him, and locked him up in what was effectively solitary confinement for over a year. He was forced to strip naked and remained that way for pretty much the whole show. In the beginning, he had no food, toilet paper, nothing. The only way he could get food and other items was to enter postcards into contests and win; in order to free himself, he had to win around one million Yen in prizes.

Over the duration of the show, his nails grew several inches, his hair and beard grew, and at one point he was forced to eat dog food because that was all he had. The incredible thing was that he became a celebrity in Japan by enduring all the hardships. In fact, I found out later that the show itself is still listed as a comedy in Japan, despite the mental strain he’d gone through, the starvation, the suffering.

Anyway, that’s when I started thinking about the ideas that eventually became The Camp.

MG: Some people have suggested that your main ideas came from the cult Japanese film Battle Royale.

JL: Yeah, to an extent. I was about thirteen or so when I first saw it, a friend of mine from school had this pirated DVD copy of it. He told me I just had to watch it. It really blew my mind [laughs]. It certainly freaked out my mom. I’d forgotten about it and had left it in the player. She came home and started watching it while I was in my room doing homework or writing or something. She was a bit freaked out for a few days, thinking I was going to suddenly start plugging the kids at school.

MG: [laughs] Did you?

JL: [laughs] No, no. I sometimes wish I could have, though.

MG: Okay, so you’ve got these ideas going around in your head. What happened next?

JL: Well, since the days of YouTube, the barriers to entry for video have been really insignificant. I mean, getting a digital HD camcorder, video editing software, distribution across social nets – it costs virtually nothing. The real issue I faced was purely legal. Could we get away with the show’s format? I mean, having Nasubi kidnapped paled into comparison with the idea of placing contestants against their will in a gulag, claiming they’re enemy combatants, and putting them under immense physical and mental stress to see what they would do, see if they will escape, whatever. It was a huge risk.

MG: I remember reading somewhere that at first you wanted to use only convicts?

JL: Yeah, that’s right. I figured it’d be really easy to get them signed up since they’d effectively given up their rights. But then I realised that it wouldn’t work; very few people would connect with hardened criminals. Most people would want them dead anyway, and probably just wouldn’t care. What we really needed were people that the audience would immediately be attracted to.

MG: How did you come up with the idea of using teenagers?

JL: There was this article I read about private rehab centres for teenagers that exist all over the world. The Chinese are particularly notorious for it, even for things like Internet addiction, but they are also prolific in the Allied nations, particularly the US where a whole private industry thrives from it even though the science is there to help them. A lot of parents, many from more religious backgrounds, didn’t want their kids’ addictions solved through mind or body hacking, so they would sign them into these rehab schools. The thing that immediately struck me were the overlaps in their methods of mental reprogramming and those used by the military for interrogation.

Anyway, quite a few of these places could get away with it because the parents had signed over consent. In most cases, the kid didn’t have a clue they were being sent in until they walked through the door and had it locked behind them. This was the perfect way for us to get participants on the show without them knowing what was really happening.

MG: Did the parents of the children fully understand what was going on?

JL: Absolutely, and they were 100% behind it otherwise they wouldn’t have put their children no the show. Some of them told me they saw it as a more modern version of Hell Houses used by evangelicals to instil fear in children about abortion, sex before marriage, homosexuality. Obviously, some parents were in it for the money, royalties from book deals, that sort of thing, but for the most part they thought it could help their children.

MG: It really struck a chord with the viewers. The first season was the most downloaded, talked and complained about in Double Vision’s history, and is rated in the top ten most controversial internet shows ever.

JL: [laughs] Well, yeah, but it’s easy to understand that. Any television show aims to get the audience involved, and controversy is never a bad thing. Look at Big Brother Village in Germany, for example. There was a massive outcry following the murder of that guy, uh, Daniel, or David – I forget – but their viewing figures went through the roof for months afterwards. It was the same with Nasubi in the nineties: even those who hated the idea of the show couldn’t help but laugh and watch. It’s been that way since the Romans had gladiators killing themselves for fun. The crowds loved it, and wanted to take part in it. That’s entertainment at its most basic level.

MG: Which leads me on to my next question: in a way, you removed Big Brother and replaced him with the actual audience. Where did you get the idea from?

JL: I remembered reading about an experiment – the Milgram experiment if I remember right – that showed people would quite often carry out orders even when they knew they were causing harm to someone else. A group of people were ordered by an authority figure to administer electric shocks to another group who were actually actors. The actors pretended to be electrocuted, and each time the first group were ordered to increase the strength of the shocks, most of them would do it despite the apparent pain of the actor.

So, I started to wonder: would it be possible to get the audience to administer punishments through votes and so on under the direction of authority figures that we would present on the show? The answer, of course, was yes. I mean, in the first episode we did, the viewers immediately followed the advice we gave to apply sensory deprivation for two days on one of our participants to induce a state of psychosis, all because our expert said it would be an easier way to control and, ultimately, help him. The audience response was so overwhelming, in fact, that I think only about five percent of all votes voted no.

MG: You took this same approach a step further in the second season.

JL: Yeah, I mean, the first season was just really raw. Like I said, it hardly cost us a cent to film and distribute, which was good because most of our money went into the sets – well, most of it went to the lawyers [laughs], but after that it was the sets – and we couldn’t afford to go really high tech. But after the first season, money just flooded in, sponsorships, donations, book deals, you name it, and then Dream came along and said, “Well, we’re keen to fund the show.”

So with all this cash coming in, that’s when I could really push the limits, so I figured it would be a great idea if we could actually automate a lot of the stuff that happens on the set, you know, robotic sentries, cameras, some active denial systems, that sort of thing, and give control of that over to the audience. I knew it could work because of the success of the Border Patrol Network -

MG: And in the UK they’ve been using similar ideas for some time in high crime areas -

JL: Yeah, exactly, so I knew it could work, Dream were happy with the idea and gave the go ahead. The audience response so far for season two has been brilliant.

MG: We’re almost out of time, but I just wanted to ask one last question. Some have hailed you as the greatest TV entertainer for a decade, others claim you’ve helped destroy America’s moral and cultural values … how do you see yourself?

JL: [laughs] See myself? Well, that’s what I would ask the audience. I’m just a mirror of them, really. If they think I’m a destroyer of American culture or values or whatever, that’s because I’m a reflection of them. In fact, most of the key figures in mass entertainment also faced the same criticisms and praise. Look at the history of reality television. I mean, Chuck Barris could probably be said to be the birthplace for what later became reality TV, but he was often accused of destroying American society, culture, morals, of polluting the airwaves. He gave people themselves, and then they blamed him for it. I expect that, so I don’t really worry so much about the criticism, or the praise, for that matter. I’m just an entertainer. Being told that someone enjoyed the show is good enough for me.

Then, the solution was to encourage the so-called “analog sunset” and to help build locked in devices such as classic music players like the iPod and the Zune, and High Definition television and DVD recorders that allowed Digital Rights Management (DRM) of content. The success in maintaining control throughout a consumer’s life cycle proved that DRM could be accepted and effective, and closed the door on those who opposed or argued against it.

Over time, however, we’ve faced an increasing threat with the use of brain-machine interfaces and more sophisticated media “body hack” devices that have turned eyes and ears into recorders of their own; a consumer merely needs a life-cube to store the events they’ve experienced, effectively side-stepping industry safeguards. While in some cases DRM is still effective with your average consumer, it is a matter of time before the control we have over our content will diminish.

The days of tomorrow will likely be far worse with no hardware device involved at all, simply a consumer’s mind.

All this has led to the inevitable question: how does one maintain DRM on what are, basically, the thoughts and memories of a consumer, and would it be ethical to do so?

There have been several useful proposals put forward to try and deal with this problem, but by far the best has been that proposed by Dream. Their solution is simply to follow the philosophy that inspired the same strategies years ago: the record player is the property of the record makers.

In other words, our industries should treat the consumer’s mind as simply another device that requires DRM capabilities added to it. Just as it was theft to download, copy or distribute a digital file, so too is it theft for a consumer to listen to a song or watch a film and save it for later playback, or to redistribute it. It was unethical for a consumer then, and so it is now. We have a right to our content, and we have a right to enforce it by whatever means or necessary.

While the answer to how we can implement such a system is by no means clear, what is certain is that if our industry does not take direct action now, we may well face extinction. If we and our governments, along with the UAN, can take the lead in helping develop and standardize tomorrow’s neural networks, we can perhaps help oversee tomorrow’s digital sunset, and shift towards a neural sunrise.

Unknown speaker in a talk entitled “The Future of DRM” at a private Dream and AACSLA sponsored event, circa. 2025

As you know, this technique was eventually developed, perfected and first used by my client, the Corrections Corporation of America, in conjunction with Wackenhut. Initially developed to help deal with terrorists held at detention facilities such as those at Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, and Afghanistan, and later to help rehabilitate American Muslims held in detention centers, the success ratio in rehabilitating these men, women and children back into society led to widespread usage through the CCA’s prison network.

The system, which my client fittingly calls “Reincarnation”, has almost completely removed the need for long term physical imprisonment. Within just a few months, the largely privatized prison system in America was totally reshaped with the vast majority of corporations in this market being forced to close their doors because of lack of business. Reincarnation spread to other countries around the world, and it has become one of the most profound products ever developed in helping cure the disease of crime. Today, the focus of corporations specialising in corrections facilities like the CCA is on what some have called prisons of the mind for individuals. This is a rather negative view: in reality it is not a prison, but freedom for each individual from their addictions, violence, anger, and destructive urges.

In the old science fiction movie Aliens, the android Bishop says to the late Sigourney Weaver that his “behavioural inhibitor” prevents him from harming (or letting someone harm) a human being. This is a good description of what has happened today as a result of my client’s efforts in genetic manipulation and neural reprogramming, and the effects have been nothing short of revolutionary.

In countries that have utilized the system, including China and Eastern Trading Bloc, America, most of the European Union, and other members of the United Allied Nations, we’ve had an over 96% success rate in rehabilitating and reprogramming individuals to re-enter society – many of them some of the most hardened criminals imaginable, including rapists, murderers and paedophiles. Untold numbers of drug offenders have been cured and are able to lead normal lives. Victims of crime, criminals and their families – these and millions more throughout the technologized world have been spared unnecessary pain and suffering. In addition, criminals have been allowed to re-enter society reprogrammed with the necessary skills to carry out basic jobs, ensuring a ready, willing work force, and giving them a second chance in life to make a decent living.

Despite all the successes in the technologized world as a result of Reincarnation, it is not enough. As the old saying goes, prevention is far better than the cure, and it is for this reason that I am here today representing my client.

The fact remains that crime still happens on a daily basis. Criminals have set up bases and operations in non-technologized societies such as Africa, Asia, South America and elsewhere to take advantage of those countries plagued by corruption, mismanagement, and war, exploiting those places that lack either the political will or simply the resources to tackle the problem of crime. They have employed rogue scientists to help reverse changes made by Reincarnation to key criminals. There have even been some cases where unwitting, innocent civilians have been kidnapped and reprogrammed to carry out crimes for others.

As a result, my client hopes to encourage the UAN to introduce steps encouraging these countries to accept what can be considered the mental equivalent of the inoculation programmes that have been carried out in the past to deal with diseases such as polio. CCA hopes that the UAN will seriously consider making Reincarnation a domestic policy requirement for all its members, as well as introduce trade tariffs to punish those countries who do not take the necessary steps to reduce crime.

It is, however, the last point that is the most important and most relevant for this committee. While we have been able to cure individual criminals of their specific diseases, until now we have been unable to prevent the disease from happening at all. I say “until now” because this committee has the ability to change that. Ever since Richard Berk demonstrated that it was possible to predict, using software, individuals that may kill, it is possible today to identify those individuals that have the highest risk of committing any crime. The CCA’s test data – of which each of you have a copy – demonstrates that it is possible to use the latest dataveillance, genetic testing, and profiling techniques to predict and identify these future risks, and schedule them for Reincarnation before they can commit any crime at all.

Some have criticized the scheme as something akin to Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World, and that we are somehow playing God and condemning people as being guilty before they have committed any crime at all. These criticisms have proven to be largely unfounded and simply false. Similar accusations were made when scientists expanded stem cell research, when Islamic extremists were imprisoned during the first phase of the War on Terror, and when pharmaceutical drugs began to be tested on prisoners. As a result of these actions, we have brought about medical miracles for the sick and disabled, and we are all much safer today.

What we need is a complete rethink of how to use Reincarnation. Just as embryos are tested for genetic disorders, so too should children be tested at school for possible future social disorders, and immunized against them. But we can take this even further. Education systems in democratic societies have long been there to help train model citizens to help build better societies, to train them for work, and to encourage consumerism, obedience, group identity and other values necessary for stable, capitalist democracies. As the great US president Woodrow Wilson once put it, “We want one class to have a liberal education. We want another class, a very much larger class of necessity, to forego the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

We need to understand that Reincarnation is simply another way of us helping educate our young. We will be able to not only prevent our children from straying down darker paths, but also give them the skills and knowledge to ensure that their future path always remains bright, both for them and for society. Thank you.

Transcript of a speech given by Chief PR Consultant David Jennings of the Lincoln Group, representing the Corrections Corporation of America at the 8th World Education Committee Meeting at the UAN Headquarters, Beijing, 2025