SubscribeEver 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.
The Guardian has a damn interesting article about the new Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology about to hit consumers with HD and Blu-Ray: The Advanced Access Content System backed and co-developed by Sony, Toshiba, Intel, IBM, Panasonic, Microsoft, Warner Brothers and Disney. This quote from Mike Evangelist of HD Boycott puts it in perspective: