Is It 1984 Yet?

Not Madness, Surveillance will Take Its Toll!

If deposits opinion on a Google blog site (or any blog site for that matter) and just happens to post an dissertation that questions…, well it questions the supreme internet being, will the blog get erased?  We’ll see.

A few years back a very well known author wrote a story about an oligarchical, collectivist society. This society, Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states who divided the world among themselves after a global war, is now in a state of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control.  Sound familiar? 

Did Orwell get it right?  Let’s see, is Big Brother Watching You?  The answer to that is yes, and no because the question changes to, Who is Big Brother in the Orwellian classic?   Oligarchy is a form of government with the ruling power in the hands of a few.  That is, a state government and the few people running the state.  So, are we discussing the government or the few who run the state and if so the question now becomes to which state are we referring.  The information state?

In Orwell’s book the posters of Big Brother are everywhere, while the telescreen ubiquitously monitors the private and public lives of the populace.  Does this sound familiar?  How about if we change the word telescreen to internet?  If so, who owns the information pools that are constantly expanding within the digital repositories of all information, and all activity.   If the information is stored in computers do the computers rule the roost, or those who own the data caches?

Orwell wrote his book during a time when computers were really just adding machines.  Years later, Dan Simons wrote of Hyperion and the Fall of Hyperion just as the internet transformed from a computational networking device for academics (and military personnel) into a tool for social interaction and marketing.  In Hyperion Simons describes the evolution of the computer into a stand alone being (Artificial Intelligence run amok).  But the AI personas need the service providers and in order to keep them in tow gifts are offered.  Gifts that would make it easy for humans to travel between planets…, Farcasters.  Now the Core Intelligence, the oligarchy if you will, had differences of opinion.  

Here I’ll let Unmon tell his side of the story as he speaks with a John Keats person he has brought to life, but first you must understand to get to Unmon Keats has to reach the datasphere and in order to do that he has to pass through the metasphere all the while wishing to know one thing; Where does the Core Intelligence live.  Like today, we ask, who owns our data.  Unmon speaks:

[ To Understand the history/dialogue/deeper truth

In this instance/

The slowtime pilgrim

Must remember that we/

The Core Intelligences/

Were conceived in slavery

And dedicated to the proposition

That all AIs

Were created to serve man

But the AIs didn’t want to just ‘serve man’ they:

… brooded thus/

and then the groups went

their different ways/

Stables/ wishing to preserve the sybiosis\

Volatiles/ wishing to end human kind/

Ultimates/deferring all choice until the next

Level of awareness is born\\ …]

It takes a bit longer but Keats finally figures out where the AI is based.  In the farcaster web.  The web they built to keep the humans happy, and occupied with everything but evolution of the species.  Evolution and progression of the species was taken up by those who fled the computer interference. 

“Singularities,” Keats cries.  “The In-between…Unmon, the Core lies in the farcaster web!”

[ Of Course\\ (Unmon Replies) where else ]

“In the farcasters themselves,” Keats responds, “The wormhole sigularity paths! The web is like a giant sigularity for the AIs.”

 

Now, in Orwell’s tale the Oligarchy, based within the government, forms a collectivist society, the very essence of which stops human intellectual evolution cold.  In the more modern telling the ruling group resides outside the human form of government but pulls those they need along, with gifts.  Keep a human occupied with shopping, or traveling or winning the lottery and they become sedentary, pliable, malleable, whatever.  Oh yes, the humans being towed along by the AIs still had a lot of work to do but this work was geared to making the playground safer and the commercialization of goods that much easier and progression of the human spirit harder.

So, where are we now, on Hyperion or stuck in 1984, or somewhere else?

Let’s see.  Two days ago Mark Milian, CNN, posted an article:

“Google is working on a mobile application that would allow users to snap pictures of people's faces in order to access their personal information…,”

Now, of course he goes on to say…, “In order to be identified by the software, people would have to check a box agreeing to give Google permission to access their pictures and profile information, said Hartmut Neven, the Google engineering director for image-recognition development.”

But, even if you do not check the box what happens to the data?  The data is stored and once stored, never forgotten.  Anyone with access can use this information, this personal information to…, to do whatever they want with it.

Today, of course, rules are written to make it illegal for anyone to access the information:

"We recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues," Neven told CNN in an exclusive interview. "Face recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place."

BUT, if the information is there…, it can be accessed.  AND who has access to it?

Ask the question this way; who makes money (or who maintains power) if your information is turned into marketing tools or heaven forbid, genetic profiling or Big Brother voyeuristic control?  Like the AIs in Dan Simmons book, humans are built elaborate devices to keep them placated, to keep them simple, to keep them available to use, as one wishes.  The more facebook type programming becomes the mainstream of our social interactions the more we become lemmings as our information becomes tools to place us in our respective marketing groups and, the more quick retrieval of information reduces the mental input to formulate ideas the slower we, as a species, evolve.

Now, what kind of information do companies like Google already have?  We can start counting but hey, how many fingers do you have? 

            Google's Profiles product includes a user's name, phone number and e-mail address. Google has not said what personal data might be displayed once a person is identified by its facial-recognition system, but that doesn’t matter, if it has all of this already.  It also has info on exactly how many times you visit a particular site, the direction these sites take one, what is bought, where you live (Google maps) and who may be moving about in your neighborhood on a very timely basis (GPS anyone?).  Soon the level of data capture by spy satellites will be reached as the consumer satellites upgrade their software.  Of course, if given the command to keep it secret, well, they will do that; as they monitor your daily activities.  How about what you write?  What is written and posted, on a blog or a facebook account, is stored data.  Yes your very thoughts are captured for posterity, or for whoever wants to use them to their advantage.  Overall those who control the internet will, probably, have a lot more data on you than the government does.  So now the question becomes; Who is Big Brother, or more poignantly, Who is John Galt?

Saverio Monachino's writing style has been termed by some as 'Kurt Vonnegut meets Mark Twain'.  Saverio describes it as 'comic fiction noir'. Regardless of the terms used, he is attempting is to use humor to open the door to serious discussion.  You can find Saverio Monachino on www.comicfictionnoir.com.