The mentioned novels seem cool, but an even better reference is Feed. Published in 2002 before MySpace was a household name, it pretty much hits the nail on the head in terms of surveillance, marketing and connectedness.
Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
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Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#12> The young boys that had to guard Ai Weiwei in his cell had to stand completely still, weren’t allowed to talk and couldn’t even blink their eyes. This is complete nonsense. You can't order someone to not blink.
OP probably meant "blink their eyes in response to a question."
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#13Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. I was so amazed the author can connect Ai Weiwei with the WildCat robot, an image of Obama's calling from a camp, and a kid in a car using Disney product. How this can connect together?! If you want to talk about surveillance or privacy, won't NSA's Snowden be a more famous and impacting example?
Read the damn article. The author goes through many examples of things that are eroding privacy.
Ai Weiwei lives under total surveillance. Google is producing technology for the military. Obama has to use a tent in his hotel room to block surveillance. The disney wristband tracks your movements and spending.
Surprisingly the NSA is barely mentioned at all. The author is primarily concerned with how technology is enabling surveillance, not the organizations currently using it.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
And goes on to show a piece of technology owned by Google. Who funded it and when is irrelevant to whether it belongs to google.
Really? Google owns a fighter jet. What kind of conclusions am I supposed to draw from that?
Probably not much since they do not own the company that designed and built that fighter jet (at least that I am aware of).
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#15Sorry to digress here. Just want to comment on Ai. He is like many other iconic/famous people in the country, who got awards aboard, do things that seem against the ruling party in the country and basically walk away with way less consequences almost every time. Some of them get into short-term jail like hero and after that their experiences worth much more. This is very interesting since average people would probably face fatal consequences, if they did something like that, even once.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#16The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#17Even if his criticisms of coveillance are correct, I still think the world is headed that way.
Simply put, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. We passed a similar threshold with industrialization, and the consequent removal of autonomy for workers on several levels (is the 1800's factory of exacting time cards and constant repetitive movements that far behind the warehouse the author describes?). It was a tumultuous transition (strikes, revolution, communism, etc.) but we made it through. The transformation in state and corporate power that tools like surveillance bring will be similar, but just like in the industrial revolution we can't turn back the clock and have to instead ride out whatever happens.
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#18Didn't go through this TLDR writing, but just briefly scrolling the page. I was so amazed the author can connect Ai Weiwei with the WildCat robot, an image of Obama's calling from a camp, and a kid in a car using Disney product. How this can connect together?! If you want to talk about surveillance or privacy, won't NSA's Snowden be a more famous and impacting example?
Read the damn article. The author goes through many examples of things that are eroding privacy. Ai Weiwei lives under total surveillance. Google is producing technology for the military. Obama has to use a tent in his hotel room to block surveillance. The disney wristband tracks your movements and spending. Surprisingly the NSA is barely mentioned at all. The author is primarily concerned with how technology is enab…
What technology is google producing for the military?
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#19The uncomfortable truth is that many HN readers are the ones gleefully building these tools.
Just another example of the bay attitude '---- you, I got mine'
Re: Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future
#20No, he's not.