That's beside the point? Gaining security by losing freedom was always on the table. What's interesting is the cultural shift toward not caring about losing freedom.
Everything I want to do in public I can still do. What "freedom" is lost? I gain security and lose no freedoms (unless you are doing something illegal). When property crime is up 53%.. plenty of people are willing to lose "freedom" whatever you are referring to, in exchange for safety.
The right to privacy, to not let the government have a master record of everywhere you've ever been and everything you've ever said just in case they decide to someday revoke free speech and due process, or decide it doesn't apply. Lately we have plenty of examples of how quickly that can happen.
You were recorded smoking marijuana, an illegal drug at the federal level. You were recorded walking into an abortion clinic, although face recognition identified as a resident of a state where abortion is illegal.
Well aren’t both of those things crimes? I’m not a fan of mass surveillance either but maybe pick a different example.
The second is clearly not. State governments don't have jurisdiction over their residents when they are out of state.
The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…
The Amazon Knight (2028): Batman hacks Ring cameras to track down the Joker, showing himself to be a rebellious vigilante who's not afraid to break a company's ToS to make justice happen. After the job is done, cut to a montage of Batman telling an Amazon worker about Wayne Enterprises' new villain-detection technology that could be used to upgrade Ring, then screwing in cameras in every room of every building of the city, and then proudly telling the bystanders that they won't have to suffer any more. He's invited to a ceremony where Jeff Bezos thanks him. A swarm of anti-evil Amazon drones takes off, flooding the city streets. The morning sun rises over Gotham City, colors become more saturated, faint shots of executing every criminal in the city can be heard. The civilians run to the streets to cheer it on, finally free from oppression. The screen fades to white, revealing the Ring Camera Pro 3 Batman Edition, complete with a Batman logo on its black outer shell. "Now only $99! (Available for free in partner municipalities)"
There would be less backlash to the Ring ad if the ad was honest about how people actually use it. Show us porch pirates, burglars and stupid neighbor who backs into your car being caught on camera. But instead, they have to come up with something "wholesome" like finding your lost doggo. The wholesomeness is so forced and cringe that it makes you think they have something to hide. It almost feels like the people who…
> porch pirates It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not available it will be handed ove…
No thanks. I want packages delivered when I’m not home. If i want it to be handed to me I can require it be handed to me, picked up, or delivered to a nearby store. If I wanted to go pick up a package I would just go to the store in the first place.
Most stuff doesn’t matter, and is rarely stolen. If something matters I’ll just have the delivery company do what I guess is required in where you live, I can choose.
Lmao did they really say it's null-key encrypted? Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the brands advertising their security the strongest often have the most ridiculously broken security (flock)
I rewatched recently. That's what he says all right.
It's said that Starship Troopers failed to do as well in USA because people thought it was pro-fascist propaganda ... it doesn't seem possible that could genuinely be the case.
Starship Troopers (the movie) is a terrible example of satire because it fails to show anything substantially bad. When you present a society that's more ethical than real life, nobody's going to care if some people wear uniforms that look a bit like Nazi uniforms. There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed in the best way possible. Military slavery ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement,…
This is all intentional. The film is emulating the type of film that would be produced by this fascist regime, of course it isn't going to include proof of the fascists being wrong. But we also don't see any evidence in support of their claims of an "existential threat" beyond the fascists claiming there is one. And since it's from the fascist perspective, the lack of evidence justifying their actions ends up supporting the idea that there is no real justification for their actions.
The movie's goal is showing the attractiveness of fascism and showing that people like you are incredibly open to fascist ideologies as long as the fascists have a scary "other" to put forward as an existential threat regardless of how real that threat truly is.
The Dark Knight was released in 2008. In that movie, Batman hijacks citizens' cellphones to track down the Joker, and it's presented as a major moral and ethical dilemma as part of the movie's overall themes. The only way Batman remains a "good guy" in the eyes of the audience is by destroying the entire thing once he's done. Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technolo…
I think it’s because in the early 2010’s these companies were doing truly awesome things, at least in my pov. Google search felt like magic and a portal to a web you could only imagine, facebook actually connected you with friends, nothing like amazon ecommerce had existed yet, cloud shit was insanely cool. Hell, my primary motivation in pursuing my degree was to work at google. I recoil in horror thinking about it now.
I think the trust gained there will be hard to break from people, that in my experience, genuinely do not realize what a complete 180 these companies have done. I sometimes wonder and am fearful at what type of thing would need to happen before people en masse realize it.
No, it's more like the militarism in a Heinlein novel. It is, at best, an unexamined assumption and, at worst, a celebration, or sometimes a passive acceptance, of violence to enforce the status quo.
In the context of the Dark Knight/surveillance example, it comes across to me as more of a recognition that the arguments in favor of these things can easily be made compelling if you evaluate them with no tradeoffs (don't you want to catch the bad guys??). Then again, I guess the film ends up doing the same thing by only demonstrating concrete benefits alongside theoretical, but unrealized, harms...
He also beats up the Joker while he's in custody, because you gotta stop the badguy at all costs. And then there's Cops vs Protestors brawl in the other Nolan batman.
There is, admittedly, a precedent within the basic premise of the Batman story itself (and Frank Miller, author of the Dark Knight Returns comic is a noted right-wing libertarian) so in the case of that franchise, Nolan isn't inventing whole-cloth but it's also not something that's limited to just his Dark Knight films
It's not really about the individual people. They're probably all pretty normal interpersonally. Our systems reward this behavior, so people do it. Surveillance is desired by the politically and economically powerful, and the contravening forces are weak and largely unorganized. Do we punish politicians or businesses for bad behavior? No? Then they'll engage in whatever behavior advances their interests. You could pu…
I like your take. I see this same thing playing out across many parts of the world. Dont hate the player hate the game It is about incentives and rules of the "game" that drive things. Sure, there are a few evil people but the vast majority of it is normal people responding to broken rules/incentives. Probably you and I both fall in this category :)
> Dont hate the player hate the game
To be clear, you can absolutely hate the player in addition to the game. That's for you to decide on a case-by-case basis. It's just important to recognize the broader context, especially if want to leave a positive impact.