This is a political thread because basically everything in life is political--something recognized by more or less, the first democracy, Classical Greece.
Knowledge is power. The government, the corporations and think tanks are mining everybody, every day, to get as much information as possible. They will use it against it, anyway they can. They know, for example, that 45% of patrons of any particular bar are going to be late on at least one credit card payment a year, while only 10% of another bar will be. They have filters for gender, class, education level, income and can predict that if you buy this type of lawn mower, you are going to send you kids to this type of school, 75% of the time. Correlations and statistical relationships are beyond a fine art, they are becoming an exact science.
The lines between government, corporations and other institutions are blurry with the same people moving from one to another, but their goal is the same: to protect themselves and to make money--as much as they can, as quickly as they can. The issue is control and a great and great percentage of effort is going into regulation and manipulation the population--and not to their benefit. All the information in My Space, FaceBook and the like is being stored forever. When some of these kids want to apply for a loan in 30 years, some of this is going to haunt them.
In East Germany, which I had the great luck to visit frequenlty when studying in Berlin in 1989, the Stazi was reputed to have the most sophisticated computers in the world. It was all hype--they had thousands and thousands of drones in sensible shoes and hair nets with index cards, recording the movements of the population, then reporting on the people making the reports, and then reporting on those reporters. I have never seen such a stagnant society--essentally dead, and with the bullet holes from WWII still visible in major buildings. Taking care of their population wasn't important, controlling them, was. I will always remember the lines in Berlin which formed at dawn waiting for fruit to come in from the countryside. And Berlin got 60% of the country's wealth funneled into it as a showcase for communism.
What is happening in the UK and US is that the government is more concerned with control than with setting policy and making tough decisions. Common themes like the very real problem of child abuse are being used to to "save" and "protect"people from themselves. And in the US, it is the billion dollar drug war, as well as the hype re: the moral failing of gay marriage. They are all useful ploys to take away personal freedoms and personal responsibiliy. And to this we can add the fantasy that the Muslims are coming to get us all--now that the communists are gone.
This is not a liberal or conservative issue as I see, but one of the role of government. Do we really want the government to tell us when we are alive and when we can die? Or what we can put into our bodies as adults? Do we think that somehow, some bureacrat knows all of this and is really looking out for us. And that by monitoring every porn site we visit out of normal curiousity that it can be brought up when we run for the local city council?
Everything is being recorded now and a highly placed IT friend tells me that e-mails are mined evey day to record the frequently of key works and associations of those words. Thus, if I write, Obama's speach bombed, it does on record. This is serious stuff and it isn't going to get any better until everybody knows about it and does their damnest to prevent it.
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