Posted on 05/30/2008 7:50:44 PM PDT by anonsquared
"...just by walking down the street you could be subject to a personal biometric system, you could be scanned by the gateway of the transit system, there could be something embedded in the street or in the flooring beneath you... you could be touching other tangible interfaces in the environment around you... the lamp posts and the other features of the streetscape could have informational services... and last but not least there's the surveillance element, there's a UAV, a robotic helicopter which is also surveying the cityscape and communicating with all of these devices... This is really what I mean by a transformation of the relationship between user and device. This person is not a user anymore in any real sense of the English world, they are a subject."
It may seem like a vision of a distant science fiction world, but this scenario laid out by Adam Greenfield, author of "Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing", could be just around the corner. In fact, at this very moment in South Korea an entire city, a "U-city", is being built that utilizes ubiquitous technology. It had it's first test run in March of last year. Several other countries are currently planning, or are currently building cities modeled around South Korea's U-city.
(Excerpt) Read more at oldthinkernews.com ...
1984 was supposed to be a work of fiction. Not a “how to” manual.
One FReeper has a tag line that says: “1984 was meant to be a warning, not an instruction manual!”
(Can’t remember which FReeper, though)
Reading the article it does seem that governments are more interested in the “how to”.
At the very least it does seem they want to use technology to try to sell us stuff we do not need or want with every step we take each day. At the most, well figure it out for yourself. The economics of this would only work in the cities. Maybe they figure that at some future point they will need to control the masses.
"We Saw What You Did, We Know Who You Are - The Reality Series"
Where Orwell was wrong was that he never figured that the same technology that the Gubmint could use to oppress or brainwash the masses could be used for the free expression of ideas that the Gubmint couldn’t control.
He never envisioned the internet or cable and satellite TV.
“He never envisioned the internet or cable and satellite TV.”
That’s a good point, but notice how China controls the internet so their citizens see only what the government wants them to. They even get major corporations (Google) to assist them in the endeavor. It can happen here too.
“may’ is suspect, as, ultimate surveillance is being implemented now, especially in Britain. The new trading regions without national borders (the EU for example) means the protections that heretofore existed for ‘citizens’ are subducted under the new rules just like home mortgages being securitized for financial management and manipulation, and rearranged without individual consideration. Conceivable are populaces being reclassified as actual commodities within the ‘human resources’ environment, and managed, bought, sold, leveraged as commodities, ‘sold in tranches’....in the same way that CDOs, SIVs are managed now.
Nothing new here, just Orwell in application.
That’s the beauty. Gubmint thinks it can control the internet.
It’s like herding cats. They control nothing.
...failure to comply, may be hazardous to you health.
Other than a scrap of yellowing parchment, the Constitution, what is the difference between our government and the government of ... pick any totalitarian nation. The slippage is already breath-taking.
In the Congressional Research Report “Data Mining and Homeland Security: An Overview”, Updated January 27, 2006,
it was stated “According to ARDA’s website (no longer available) “some intelligence data sources grow at a rate of four petabytes per month now, and the rate of growth is increasing.”
Please note, that was two and a half years ago, they were talking about multiple databases, each of which would have grown by 120 PETABYTES since this report was published.
I believe it was either William Gibson or Bruce Sterling who stated that, while a government may collect every possible bit of minutia on every individual, the sheer volume of that data all but assures an individual's anonymity, as the necessary data-mining resources will only be allocated to the most urgent cases.
Finally, although I certainly would not be comfortable with the thought of a Hillary or an Obama using this technology against us, I am more than happy that it is apparently being used against our enemys right here and now.
btt
You really think the internet, etc are something new?
Did you forget about the phamplets they used when Ben Franklin, etc were alive? Some sort of free speech as always been used.
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