Why ask the question about a hypothetical future or even currently when we have been living in a dystopian surveillance society for decades now.
Snowden is already a long time ago and he just exposed what so many people, including myself, knew has been happening. The consequences are already here. The ubitquos nature of surveillance passed this tipping point decades ago as well. Just the other day I heard my coworkers talking about their TVs always listening. I was like your cell phones have been doing this for ten years now, are you kidding me!?
Consequences:
Loss of privacy
Control of opposition for whoever is in charge of the apparatus
Control of societal narrative or zeitgeist
Manipulation of all monetary systems
Well, that’s kind of why the post says “current” you know? The future part getting at “this might get even worse as time goes on”
I was referring to the fact surveillance culture is from the past. In fact, the only new thing is technology. The FBI was found doing dossiers on all the civil rights people.
We’re already at the point of hiding from the T.V. to write privately in your journal, and the state can put you on trial for erasing your phone memory, so that’s neat. I can’t imagine we’re too far away from getting a knock on your door if you don’t have any devices plugged in that they can monitor you through. Establishing personal privacy will eventually be considered reasonable suspicion. “What exactly are you trying to hide from us?”
25 years back it was considered a big privacy invasion that Windows XP would profile your system to ensure it get the right version of a security update. So determining if you needed 32bit or 64 bit. Home or Server. What version you were currently on.
Nowadays, most know who we are, what we are saying, who we are saying it to, scanning our photos, tracking your keyboard inputs, facial recognition, GPS tracking, wifi/bluetooth tracking, voice profiling, what you are reading, what sites you are visiting etc. And all this happened in 25 years.
I fear how things will move in the next 25 years. It all feels like they are locking people down so that they cannot push back against hash changes coming down the pipe. Dropping living standards accelerated by the dual problem of declining resources and climate blow back leading to power structures that try to secure itself using any tools possible.
Watch them in the effort of doing this use tribal justice by turning once mundane things into a vice, and then using said vice against people, all cataloged and analyzed with decades of data fed into the data set.
The fact im storing up on dozens of antipsychotics (cause yay i was feeling better and i didnt need but my doc wanted me on them) now doesnt sound such a bad idea, maybe i can just absolutely dismantle all my brain functions into death or becoming a vegetal, you know, live life but keep your options opened, I’d hate to live like a bitch like that, always being watched like if i was on reality TV or some bullshit, i read a bit on the TV stuff (i think you are referencing 1984 or bnw maybe) but i dont have a tv, a pc is more than enough
I don’t see many ways out really, its depressing
fisting, it will be a lot like fisting. uncomfortable but you’ll get used to it.
following on the analogy, what lube-like policy you think could end up being introduced to facilitate such a process? (if any)
Creating in groups and out groups.
Just look at China. Subdued is the word.
Having lived in China for a bit, it’s literally fine depending on who is doing the surveillance. Like I prefer no surveillance, obviously, but unless you genuinely mean harm and as long as the entity doing said surveillance does not genuinely mean harm is a net positive for society.
It’s objectively good at cutting down crime (though not as much as education and poverty reduction), it’s incredibly useful to reduce corruption and false convictions, and it sets a record, good or bad, that is objective (or was before the invention of AI videos).
The one reasonable argument I have heard for surveillance is, what if the average person ends up with the ability to do something that could be fatal to society?
Say we can now engineer a fatal contagious virus in the bed room, this unfortunately means there is only two viable paths through. Either you let the risk of the viruses being unleashed and we end up in a self termination event, or you need to have surveillance into peoples bed rooms to ensure that they are not making these viruses. The real trick is too not make the device that allows this situation to arise.
Now that makes sense from a civilization ending technology like a nuclear bomb, but when it comes to general unrest, it is a vast over reach. But with capital becoming afraid of a shrinking pie, count on them over reaching.
They will do it while saying “It is to protect you”, they need that because all acts of evil always have a claim to virtue.
I mean, that’s kinda the whole point about anything that steals your agency, If I could be 100% sure no doubt in my mind that the entity/person that recorder all my data from birth to death would never use it for anything that could harm me, yea record even my gooning sessions, my psychological breakdowns, all my breakups etc etc etc
Thing is you can’t really make that assumption in this world, also because you not only need your current overlords to be 100% good, but every single new overlord you are going to get in the future (at least for the next few decades while you are still alive)
Well that’s why you don’t have overlords, you have an accountable series of people designated to catch corruption first, and all other crimes second.
you mean you have, or you mean you should in theory, have those
Should have. Though there are very few countries with council democracy.
Hard disagree, with what you said at the top. Overreaching state surveillance is not fine at all. The issue is of course, firstly my privacy, secondly the state may say it means well, so long as you’re in their good books, but they can change their mind on a whim and boom, youre now black bagged and dissappeared
Double Think
mind explaining double think? i read the book back on highschool, but i never understood it more than like doublethink is a contradictory way of thinking so its easier to accept nonsensical or paradoxical things “dad loves me so much” - “dad beats the shit out of me if i cook the food to long” living together, something like that?
Been about 15 years since I read it but that’s what I recall. Thinking the opposite of what you originally think and being able to delude yourself into believing both are true. Like brainwashing yourself into being a better liar so you don’t get your cheeks clapped for thought crime.
That makes sense
