‘Big Brother’ watching: creating a safer world; or goodbye privacy

In gambling casinos, cameras spot a card counter, thief, or blacklisted player, and a database instantly confirms identification. The suspect is quickly escorted from the facility, or arrested. Intelligent cameras that can observe people and react to events are advancing exponentially. At a White House briefing, counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said, thanks to the U.S. military's latest facial recognition technology, he was "99 percent" certain that the commando team had killed bin Laden.

Follow this up with the recent IEET blog posts “Forget 1984 and Conspiracy Stories, This is the Real Thing” by Federico Pistono and “What’s Wrong With Borgdom?” by Rick Searle and a clear theme emerges: we are but slaves to the technomatrix of our own making. If this is really true what can we do? Should we throw in the towel and go along with the program or stand up, unplug ourselves and say ‘no way’? Is our decision that radical or is there a middle way?

The title implies a dichotomy that isn’t necessarily there.

@SHaGGGz,

I admit I am not the world’s greatest writer. How do you think it should be titled? I appreciate the critique.

Maybe something like “Orwellian overlord or harbinger of reciprocal accountability?”

@SHaGGGz,

I can see what “Orewellian overload” would implicate, but would this do justice to the last two paragraphs in the article where I point out that “Big Brother’ might affect us in positive ways—creating a “kinder, gentler humanity that could morph into a peaceful ‘Global Village’”?

That would be what the latter part of my suggestion referred to. Overlord, by the way.

@SHaGGGz,

I see what you mean. However, many of my readers—mostly ‘boomers and seniors—do not own the luzury of a college education, so I try to talk in terms that are easier to understand with this group.

Thanks for the suggestion, Dick.

Although we are statistically less violent than we were in the past (even gun murder rates have gone down believe it or not) I don’t think we are going to be kinder and gentler anytime soon and at this point its hard to imagine a “global village” forming among countries with totally polar views, values, and agendas.  That what makes the whole new world order talk and bunch of b.s.

“That what makes the whole new world order talk and bunch of b.s.”

B.S?: three years from now, the GOP will prepare their New Hampshire primary to start choosing yet another Bush-type.. hard to believe but true nonetheless. It was before your time, Chris, however HW Bush, the first Bush, spoke of a new world order (lower case) and in response Pat Robertson wrote a senile paranoid ‘Christian’ book titled the New World Order (high case).
The so-called conservative Right is clueless; by helping to dissolve the Warsaw Pact, Reagan cut the ground from under their unity and they have been casting around for consensus. Republicans don’t have Reagan to guide them or the threat of Communism to unify them. They are as lost sheep, Chris.
That’s what compassionate conservatism is about: spending govt. funds for conservative ends; and three years from now they will nominate another Bush-type. Shows you how powerful nostalgia is: in their sentimentality for the past, the Republican Right wants to elect politicians who spend government funds to keep the illusion of Reagan (who announced “government is the Enemy”) going.
BS? well, the GOP ought to know.

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