The City of Oakland, east across the Bay by bridge from San Francisco, is just five miles away, but it might as well be five thousand. There is a modern downtown cityscape and a picturesque waterfront, both of which have revived themselves multiple times over the last century plus.

When Gertrude Stein remarked decades ago, “There is no there, there,” about her girlhood home in Oakland, she was talking about the fact that the cozy workman’s bungalow she grew up in had been torn down and wasn’t “there” anymore. Its tradition of reinvention is as strong as its citizen’s determination to stay and live their lives there. And yet for as good as life can be in Oakland, it’s had more than its share of poverty and violence, murder and mayhem.

Technology – silent technology – is now stepping in and just possibly solving a problem thought previously impossible to solve.

This last spring Oakland tested a system, whose brand name is “ShotSpotter.” Strong microphones – capable of detecting sounds over a mile away – were placed on roofs in what might be called a dicey neighborhood, one in which everyday citizens thought twice about going out at night or even getting involved what was happening in the streets. Using the new microphones, computers listened to the background sounds of the neighborhood, looking for one particular kind: gunshots. A human might have difficulty distinguishing between gunfire, a car backfire and the occasional cherry bomb, but to a computer, they have distinctly different audio signatures.

And once detected, the computers and their microphones working together actually goes one better. The relative loudness of the gunshot in each microphone and the split-second delay of when the sound arrives from one to the next, enables these computers to figure out exactly where the sound originated. That’s right. Where exactly the gun was fired, typically within 10 to 30 feet.

During the test period, the police were able to corral a person who fired off a shot, maybe just for the heck of it. Interestingly enough, the shot was never reported to the police. But that didn’t matter. The police came running.

What got me to thinking about this was the tech-conscious idea that “Big Brother is watching you,” originated by George Orwell’s novel 1984. The popular “Big Brother” television series pays direct homage to this, while the ubiquitous reality of cameras all over London is more the idea.

To be sure, we are willing to give up plenty for the sake of our individual and collective safety, but no one relishes the idea that he or she is being watched. It directly impacts our sense of freedom, our innate right to privacy.

But listened to? In a general way? Unblinkingly waiting for the unexpected gunshot? To me that managed to feel far less invasive. After all, can a random gunshot ever be heard good news? Bad news is what it means in Oakland, where the homicide rate is high, and the toll taken on teenagers is heartwrenching.

Not only does this seem like a step in the right direction, I’m beginning to wonder if technology has finally progressed past the imaginings of George Orwell. In his vision, technology emulated what humans did to ensure safety, or at least, control – cameras recorded what live humans witnessed with their eyes, and if close enough, listened to what was said.

But that now technology can do things better than humans, perhaps it can be more effective, while being less invasive. If that’s true, our expectations of technology may just have to change, and the vision of George Orwell may in fact be outdated.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.