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There was this thing on the news the other day saying that people's mobile phones could soon be used to create targeted advertising by using the signal to tell where you are. In effect they are saying they will be able to track our movements using our phones and have this all tied into some sort of tracking system presumably paid for by it's commercial applications. A bit like the retina scanning in the film Minority Report (or the P.K.Dick book 40 years it's senior).
To me, the lovechild of William Boroughs and Will Gibbson, this is basically a sugar coated prelude to a kind of big brother tracking system. Then I got to thinking; well under what circumstance would I actually consent to such a system? TBH there are only a few laws which I disagree with and break on a regular basis, mostly to do with controlled substances. So I figured that if all controlled substances (including say pyrotechnics etc) were made available to the public under certain circumstances (licensing, tests, safe usage agreements and so-forth) then I actually wouldn't mind having an always on transponder implanted in everyone. One other thing; I don’t do prostitutes but I think that should be legal too, basically abolish victimless crimes.
If we all had transponders, no anonymous money transfer, no anonymous phone calls, no anonymous web usage; then almost all crime could be made a thing of the past. Burglary, assault, vandalism, rape, murder and theft would all become impossible to get away with. You could just re-wind the records and see who was there, no mystery.
I know we don’t like to think that people are watching us but I've always believed in anonymity in numbers. There are 120,000,000 people in the UK, why watch you? Don’t be so vain! Anyway, apart from victimless crimes, what have you got to hide? Nobody can justify murder and theft rationally (except if the state is corrupt like it is (shut up left brain), no you shut up!)[shut up both of you, it obviously couldn’t happen in the currant state of affairs so lets not bicker about the details].
Conversely there is the argument that a civilisation is where the members of society choose to do the right thing rather than in a police state where they are forced to do the right thing. Problem with a police state is if control breaks down the whole thing burns!
Or to paraphrase Boroughs 'the reason technology is a break from the past is that the more you come rely on it, the less likely you are to survive should you have to do without it'. This applies doubly to technologically enforced social control systems I suppose.
What do you lot think? |
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