A Generation Is All They Need

A Generation Is All They Need

I am not a Luddite. I believe that technology can be used for good purposes. I think that this is fairly obvious. Advances in medical technology save lives, and we are using the Internet in order to defeat these SOBs who want to control every aspect of our lives. In Democracy in America V2 , Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840 wrote:

The kind of oppression with which democratic peoples are threatened will resemble nothing that had preceded it in the world; our contemporaries would not find its image in their memories. I myself seek in vain an expression that exactly reproduces the idea that I form of it for myself and that contains it; the old words despotism and tyranny are not suitable. The thing is new, therefore I must try to define it, since I can not name it.

I don't think that de Tocqueville could have forseen this. Mussolini called fascism the marriage of the state and the corporation. Well this is fascism with a twist, its techo-fascism. And it is being implemented through the process of incrementalism.

How many of you have 2 or 3 different 'supermaret cards' in your purse or wallet? Try this test out the next time you go to a grocery store: try using the wrong card and see if it works. See if you still get that discount. I have done it. If you live in the Phoenix area your Frys, Bashas, and Safeway cards are all interchangeable. And there is no reason to think they won't work at Albertsons too. And I know that if you go Vegas your Frys card will work at Smiths there. I am more than willing to lay odds that any of these cards will work in Missouri grocery stores too: any takers? (I will give 3:1). Now I'm not saying that all of these grocery stores are all owned by the same corporation: some of them are for sure, but I will bet the cards work everywhere.

But we have to use those cards because otherwise it would be so much more expensive: this is called an incentive.

And its about tracking our preferences so that they can better market to us. Here is a Fox News article: Pentagon to Track All Consumer Purchases

A massive database that the government will use to monitor every purchase made by every American citizen is a necessary tool in the war on terror, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

So here we see terror and incentives working towards the same means. Returning to the Star article:

By the time my four-year-old son is swathed in the soft flesh of old age, he will likely find it unremarkable that he and almost everyone he knows will be permanently implanted with a microchip. Automatically tracking his location in real time, it will connect him with databases monitoring and recording his smallest behavioural traits.

If people, and by people I mean consenting adults capable of making semi-rational decisions, want to embed microchips under their skin or in their brains, then that is fine with me. That is a big part of the definition of liberty as written in the constitution and defined by the courts. But we don't need the courts the define liberty for us: liberty equals freedom. And this isn't 1984 just yet, and I will do everything in my power to make sure that four year olds don't get embedded with microchips, so help me Allah.

Most people anticipate such a prospect with a sense of horrified disbelief, dismissing it as a science-fiction fantasy. The technology, however, already exists. For years humane societies have implanted all the pets that leave their premises with a small identifying microchip. As well, millions of consumer goods are now traced with tiny radio frequency identification chips that allow satellites to reveal their exact location.

Oh. So I guess if humane societies are using microchips then it must be ok. Millions of consumer goods tracked with RFID? I guess thats ok too since its part of humane societies.

A select group of people are already "chipped" with devices that automatically open doors, turn on lights, and perform other low-level miracles. Prominent among such individuals is researcher Kevin Warwick of Reading University in England; Warwick is a leading proponent of the almost limitless potential uses for such chips.

Prominent individuals, or prominent among such individuals? An almost limitless potential. Wow. Sign me up today. We won't even have to turn on lights anymore! Think of the convienence!

Other users include the patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, many of whom have paid about $150 (U.S.) for the privilege of being implanted with an identifying chip that allows them to bypass lengthy club queues and purchase drinks by being scanned. These individuals are the advance guard of an effort to expand the technology as widely as possible.

Cool and hip young clubbers are already shelling out big bucks to get chipped. Its so neat and convenient.

From this point forward, microchips will become progressively smaller, less invasive, and easier to deploy. Thus, any realistic barrier to the wholesale "chipping" of Western citizens is not technological but cultural. It relies upon the visceral reaction against the prospect of being personally marked as one component in a massive human inventory.

Getting a chip is really no big deal at all. Just get over yourselves people. Welcome to the Brave New World.

Today we might strongly hold such beliefs, but sensibilities can, and probably will, change. How this remarkable attitudinal transformation is likely to occur is clear to anyone who has paid attention to privacy issues over the past quarter-century. There will be no 3 a.m. knock on the door by storm troopers come to force implants into our bodies. The process will be more subtle and cumulative, couched in the unassailable language of progress and social betterment, and mimicking many of the processes that have contributed to the expansion of closed-circuit television cameras and the corporate market in personal data.

No 3 a.m. knocks? I find that very reassuring. What happens after the next big terror attack? What happens when we "lose a city", as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently said:

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a "different set of rules" may be needed to reduce terrorists' ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

The Internet is right now under attack from the techno-fascists. Though we scored a big victory today with the defeat of the COPE act. The free spread of information outside of their control is a major threat to these people. And when you hear about net neutrality, and the "need" for a tiered it is important to understand what it means and what is really going on. It is about taking away even more of our liberties and putting them in the hands of corporate control.

Haggerty is right though. It is absolutely through the process of incrementalism that these things will take place. Except what he fails to understand (or maybe he does?) is that our freedoms are being attacked from multiple angles, not just through the "unassailable language of progress and social betterment". Terrorism isn't just about providing a pretext to go war with countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Syria: it is also about increasing the powers of the techno-fascist police state. But if humanity wakes up in time we can stop them.

What an interesting article that Haggerty has written. I suppose I should have read the whole thing first before I started picking it apart sentence by sentence. Haggerty goes on to describe just exactly how the incrementalism might look like, and he comes out opposed to these chips. That makes me happy: after reading the first few paragraphs I was under the assumption that he was a piece of human trash, a soulless sycophant of the new world order.

An increasing array of hypothetical chipping scenarios will also be depicted in entertainment media, furthering the familiarization process.In the West, chips will first be implanted in members of stigmatized groups. Pedophiles are the leading candidate for this distinction, although it could start with terrorists, drug dealers, or whatever happens to be that year's most vilified criminals.