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Texas Border Watch Website
Via Yahoo News, we have an update on a story I reported about back in June:
SAN ANTONIO - Texas has started broadcasting live images of the U.S. border on the Internet in a security program that asks the public to report signs of illegal immigration or drug crimes.
A test Web site went live Thursday at texasborderwatch.com with views from eight cameras and ways for viewers to e-mail reports of suspicious activity. Previously, the images had only been available to law enforcement and landowners where the cameras are located.
Well ain’t that just grand! My long-term prediction on where this sort of technology leads us: I’m imagining a scenario that goes something like this. After growing public outcry over increasingly intensive surveillance programs of its citizens, the government eventually decides to go “open-source” with the data feeds that it is collecting. Suddenly, you can now get a live video and audio feed direct from each of your neighbors houses, and eventually from their neuronal implants. This way, law enforcement expenditures are slashed because popular entertainment has been combined with surveillance technology, and we are all always on camera, watching one another’s lives, constantly turning in one another when we slip up. This trend, of course, finds its roots in reality television, which acclimatized the culture to constant surveillance and made us imagine ourselves as celebrities when the cameras turn on us, rather than would-be criminals. As a result, people retreat deeper and deeper into personalized fantasy worlds (with the advent of immersive VR technology) where they can act out in a “safe” (ie, unreal and also completely controlled) environment all their repressed desires from real life. This push towards the liberating power of fantasy and the restrictive properties of reality pushes us further and further into the trap of real life seeming “fake” in comparison to movies and television.
But then, that’s just me spinning out science-fiction extrapolations, not me watching real trends that are already underway, right? Right! So don’t worry, cause none of this will ever happen!
November 6th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Robert J. Sawyer wrote a sci-fi novel called ‘Hominids’ (part of a series). The world created by the author seems to picture the “perfect” (matriarchal) technocracy. In this world (an alternate human timeline where neanderthals became the dominant species), each member of society has a camera/computer embedded in them. Each camera is hooked up to the public network, and all output is recorded at the governments database. Not only does this ensure an objective witness at all times and places (true justice!), it allows all members of the society to be entertained by the rest. But yeah, it’s just a book…
By the way, the advent of VR technology has been near for at least a decade. But the moneymen have decided not to push it, because of its frequent side-effects: mystical experiences of oneness, ego death, the shattering of absolutes. Maybe their still devising a way to spin the effects before massmarketing it.
November 6th, 2006 at 12:08 pm
David Brin wrote a non-fiction book about this in the 90’s called “The Transparent Society.” Check it out.
November 7th, 2006 at 2:30 am
Big Brother throws a party for everyone who might ever be interested in you, and it’s located in your head. That’s pretty damned scary. And y’know what, alla those people who give us the line about the innocent have nothing to fear will likely be the ones who push us into it, while we feel like we’re doing the right thing as innocent people in a potentially criminal society.
After all - if everyone who’s disagreeing is labelled as hiding something, wouldn’t that be a pretty major stigma to attach to dissent, and great lever to make it happen?