elbows
Well-Known Member
I note that you dont seem interested in my main point on this thread, which is that batshit 'religious' objections are not a helpful way to highlight and fight the broader issue.
As for compliance, being sly when getting people to accept stuff, thats one of the main reasons I mentioned mobile phones. Although education does have an indoctrination aspect to it, when it comes to tracking technology I really dont think that normalising it at school is the main way they can get people to sleepwalk into new orwellian nightmares. Rather, this is achieved as a by-product of technological progress in general, and by giving people positive reasons to welcome the technology. The combination of GPS & internet in phones is a great example of this, people really like the upsides of this technology. Its a concern, just as a raft of other privacy issues are today, but I dont think its one that will be successfully addressed by people being hysterical about it.
However there are a number of ways in which the most totalitarian possibilities of technology can be thwarted. For a start people do love to subvert things, and under a number of scenarios it is very easy to imagine people thwarting the powers that be and their tech of the day, if they have good reason to. But to address this properly you need to look at the specific political context in which problems could arise. Absolute freedom of every sort has always been a myth, and abstract concepts rarely get the blood boiling on their own, examples of grotesque application of such stuff that captures the public imagination and makes then think 'this could happen to me' are required. Sorry to dissapoint you but the paranoid CT'ers arent enough on their own to effect this kind of change, any advantage you think they may have by being prepared to accept and exaggerate the worst case scenarios are negated by their obvious disconnect from demonstrable reality and the impotence that comes with it. There is no need to kill, imprison or discredit such people because they are more than capable of discrediting themselves. Once in a blue moon they may latch onto something that does have a greater resonance with people beyond the paranoid core, but hold your breath for that and you are just wasting your time, and more reasonable, coherent and balanced people are likely to steal the thunder anyway, ensuring the CTers are as irrelevant to change as ever.
To give an example, I dont believe there is any point in parping on about implanted technology at this point, and not just because the tech isn't ready yet. There are a range of new psychological barriers that present themselves when dealing with implanted technology, and we have no idea how well people will take to such ideas. There is a fair chance people will reject it, it crosses a line and may lead to a similar backlash that only the CT'ers get worked up about at this point. Hell we dont even yet know whether certain wearable forms of computing such as google glasses are going to win people over, so whats the point jumping ahead. People like to have the choice to leave something behind, and that choice is lost with implanted stuff, although if it ever happened I'm sure those with a need to subvert the tech would find a way.
Do you have a smartphone?
