It Is Your Choice
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not watching you.
The embryonic LifeLog program would dump everything an individual does into a giant database: every e-mail sent or received, every picture taken, every Web page surfed, every phone call made, every TV show watched, every magazine read. All of this -- and more -- would combine with information gleaned from a variety of sources: a GPS transmitter to keep tabs on where that person went, audio-visual sensors to capture what he or she sees or says, and biomedical monitors to keep track of the individual's health.
Our only hope lies in bureaucratic incompetence.
There are opposing forces. Cory Doctorow's outfit, Electronic Frontier Foundation ("Because being able to share information and ideas freely is the whole reason the Web was created in the first place!") is working "to support the essential human right of free speech, a fundamental building block of free society, affirmed by the U.S. Bill of Rights in 1791 and by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights in 1948." (gif here.)
Steve Mann, who has been studying the interface between human and electronic technology from an particularly personal POV sums it up thus:
Wisely designed technology... need not be about external control. In fact, the 'killer app' of wearable computing may very well be the personal empowerment of the individual. Wearable computing will allow us to explore the full potential of many modern technologies and ideas without requiring us to sacrifice our freedom or privacy. Instead of the current vision of "smart floors", "smart lightswitches", and "smart toilets" that watch us and respond to our actions, what we will witness is the emergence of "smart people".
(BTW, those super-cool shades he's wearing in the foto are actually his cybernetic interface with the world. No, seriously. Dr. Mann has been perceiving the world through increasingly sophisticated electronic interfaces since 1980. Cheggitout.)
The point is, still, that it is not increasingly complex technology that gets us in these jams. It is how we choose to use it. (WE: you, me, us, I.)
A pencil is a piece of technology. You can write me a sonnet with it; or you can stab me in the eye. It is your choice.
Next entry: Greg Egan, please call your avatar...
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