SubscribePerhaps European investigators who are complaining of stonewalling by the US government in their investigation into the secret CIA detention centers and prisoner rendition should give ABC News and the Washington Post a call. Chances are, they know something they’re not telling. Have a look at this very interesting exchange between Brian Ross, Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News, and Ed Schultz provides wonderful insight into how the media will often apply self censorship to themselves:
It seems the NSA snooping scandal has taken a little twist. ABC News journalists Brian Ross and Richard Esposito have claimed that a federal source told them “the government is tracking the phone numbers we … call in an effort to root out confidential sources.”
One day a girl college student in Canada asked me to define reality for her, for a paper she was writing for her philosophy class. She wanted a one-sentence answer. I thought about it and finally said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” That’s all I could come up with. That was back in 1972. Since then I haven’t been able to define reality any more lucidly.
But the problem is a real one, not a mere intellectual game. Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groupsâ??and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it’s all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. Andâ??cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.
So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another.
From Philip K. Dick’s work, How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later, 1978
Ever since watching the films Powaqqatsi and Koyaanisqatsi, I was turned towards director Godfrey Reggioâ??s ideas about technology as environment, that “itâ??s no longer something we use, but something we live. The popular myth of neutrality, that technology is â??neutralâ? and itâ??s the use or misuse of it that determines its value, I think is woefully inadequate.”
“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committedâ??would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paperâ??the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
- George Orwell, 1984
Orwell, were he still alive, would have been rather fascinated at the technological advances that now allow governments to spy on their citizens. He would probably also be amazed to realise that it no longer requires a physical person to connect the dots to suspect someone of being a possible terrorist, or to monitor thought crime. The Great Firewall of China is an excellent example how an increasingly technological age allows for greater methods of control and surveillence.
Nanotechnology has fascinated me for some time now ever since I picked up Eric Drexler’s Engines of Creation. I am always, however, constantly amazed when I mention it to my friends and they never seem to have any idea about what it is, where it’s going, and what are the possibilities. So here’s a small list of must reads. You can always rely on Wikipedia’s nanotechnology article for an introduction, but there are better works out there to rely on.
An interesting article appeared in the Independent today entitled Electronic Smog:
Invisible “smog”, created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals.
This is hardly anything new: claims in the UK about pylons causing cancer have been made for years, and questions about mobile phones being a health hazard have been made for a long time. Both have been treated with the usual ping-pong of studies refuting the claims for and against (see here for pylons, here for mobiles). The BBC reported in 2000 about a woman who was so sensitive to electricity that she couldn’t even wear a battery powered watch, and experience sharp pain whenever walking on ground that covered power cables.
“Out the box” is one of my worst business catch-phrases ever since I worked for a guy who was a walking catch-phrase dictionary. He couldn’t seem to talk without some abbreviation or acronym coming out his mouth. Regardless, the description suits this case because it’s good to see someone talking about new business models when it comes to music, file sharing, and copyright. The company in question is Nettwerk, run by a Terry McBride, and the model is something he calls “behavioural marketing”.
DVD Review: Avalon
Studio: Bluelight
Run Time: 102 min
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Starring: Malgorzata Foremniak, Jerzy Gudejko
Webpage (UK Release): http://www.avalonthemovie.com/
Mamoru Oshii from Ghost In The Shell fame turned to real live acting in this amazing, thought provoking sci-fi flick. It took him ten years to fully realise his project, wanting to fuse reality and illusions to make a â??real picture movieâ? that more resembled animation.
5 May 2006
Book Review: I Am Alive And You Are Dead: A Journey Into The Mind Of Philip K. Dick
Filed under: Music, Film & Books
Polish author Stanislaw Lem, who died recently, held all of American science fiction in the greatest of contempt, except for one person: Philip K. Dick. It’s easy to see why today. Although it took a very long time for Dick to achieve widespread fame and recognition for his work, he is now considered a giant among giants in science fiction writing: around fourteen of his works are presented in the Gollancz SF Masterworks