> >So far I have taken the stance that our attitudes do not matter much.
> >Surveillance is coming anyway. I still think that. spike
>
> Zero Powers wrote: Same here. I just take it a step further and say that I
> think it will be a
> good thing. There is no benefit without some detriment, and that certainly
> holds true for transparency. But on the whole I am convinced that society
> as a whole will benefit greatly from transparency, so long as its power is
> distributed and not kept in the control of the relative few.
Ja. I look at many of the dire predictions that came true: the population
estimates of some cities came out about right. But when we got there,
it wasnt as bad as we thought. How about the 1970s prediction that
in the year y2k, people would *buy* drinking water! Horrors.
But when it actually happened that way (sort of), well, it just wasnt
that bad. The Jeremiahs forgot to predict that nearly everyone would
have plenty of spare money for that sorta thing.
Nowthen, let me extrapolate with the dire predictions I myself have made
regarding the loss of privacy in our own bedrooms, assuming we havent
the means to defeat such devices. I suggest that this situation too, will
not be as bad as we think it will be, for a couple of reasons. The ones
most affected will be those who are young and beautiful and worth
gawking at. This generation will be preadapted by having grown up
with surveillance cameras, from preschool on up. Perhaps they wont
mind as much as we will, and lets face it, we will be oldies then, and
who wants to watch oldies?
This whole privacy-in-the-bedroom obsession must be a recent thing.
I dont think people had such luxury until a few hundred years ago, and
yet they managed to get by somehow. Perhaps most people
will be able to afford some form of antisurveillance, and those who
cannot will manage anyway, perhaps by being far less modest about
their bodies that we prudish moderns tend to be. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:12:13 MDT