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Originally Posted by Ken Maltby
Have any of you been watching "Person of Interest" on TV?
Luck;
Ken
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Here!
Second best show on broadcast TV.
Even granted that the show is (excellent) SF, the points it makes about the "cybersphere" we live in are valid and illuminating, no?
Everything they do in the show, from cloning phones to tapping traffic cams is old hat. Not as magically easy as they show it, but doable. The Boston bombing is one example of the uses of the embedded surveilance we live under. And Boston is nowhere near as wired as New York or DC. Or London.
From the US:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/26/te...oston-bombings
From Australia:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/boston...428-2imkl.html
From the UK:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22274770
How much things like this push your buttons is going to depend a lot of your attitudes towards technology, authority, and the rest of society around you.
This debate is far from new, BTW.
Niven and Pournelle examined the issues of security vs privacy in a wired society over 30 yars ago in OATH OF FEALTY, 1981.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_Fealty_(novel)
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In the near future, a race riot results in the destruction of an area just outside Los Angeles. The city sells the construction rights to a private company, which then constructs an arcology, named Todos Santos. The higher standard of living enjoyed by Todos Santos residents causes resentment among Angelenos. The arcology dwellers have evolved a different culture, sacrificing privacy - there are cameras (not routinely monitored) even in the private apartments - in exchange for security. The residents are fiercely loyal to the arcology and its management, and the loyalty runs both ways. During the course of the novel, Todos Santos is compared to a feudal society, with loyalty and obligations running both ways, hence the title. The systems at the arcology are run by MILLIE, an advanced computer system, and some high-level executives have direct links to MILLIE via bio-electronic implants in their brains. Other workers in the arcology work by telepresence, including one woman who remotely operates construction equipment on a lunar base.
Todos Santos causes resentment among Angelenos, but has improved their lives as well. The company that owns the arcology tows icebergs in, solving the water shortage for all Southern Californians. Todos Santos has dug a Los Angeles subway using a digging machine, which uses an oxyhydrogen torch. Todos Santos is at the hub of the subway system, and contains a huge mall, which Angelenos may visit. This easy access causes Los Angeles' city officials to complain about the shopping dollars and tax revenues going outside the city limits.
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Note the attitude of the Angeleno establishment towards the Todos Santos Mall. Just like big city establishments towards WalMart and Amazon.
Early in the book there is a scene where an ex-LA Cop starts work in Todos Santos Security and the first thing he is told is that he is not a cop anymore; his job is not to enforce laws and rules but to serve and protect the residents. Trust and loyalty runs both ways and people are comfortable with the environment they have *willingly* embraced.
Of course, people on the outside have entrely different attitudes. The cuture clash is the the trigger for the conflict central to the plot of the novel. (Highly recommended, of course. One of the great SF Novels of the 20th.)
Even earlier, Mack Reynolds covered a lot of the same territory in THE TOWERS OF UTOPIA, in 1975.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Towers-Uto.../dp/0553068849
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Shyler-Deme is under siege! The enemy has no face. It does not show the scanners. It avoids the world's most sophisticated survellance system. But it leaves a wake of profitless crime and motiveless murder... and puts the future of mankind's paradise-on earth in peril! The Towers of Utopia - A compelling adventure into a possible future by Mack Reynolds.
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In neither book is the surveilance society presented as inherently evil or inherently good, but rather the way people see it depends on where the person is coming from in the first place.
One thing common to both books is that the people raised in the culture of the surveilance society see it as neither; to them it is simply the way things are.
And that pretty much describes *our* world; like it or not, trust it or not, the System is in place. And it isn't going away just because somebody feels antsy. As long as people want to kill us just for existing, it is going to take actual evidence of actual malfeasance to even mount a challenge to the existence of thee System.
We may not have the Person of Interest "Machine" yet.
But if we don't, we soon will.
We've been on that road for 40 years now.