Posted on 06/01/2003 9:11:26 PM PDT by Timesink
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:49:03 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Prime time airwaves have been awash with images of subprime modern behavior: First came the snapshots of the Iowa State men's basketball coach downing beers at a fraternity party, next was the grainy video of a girls' football game at Chicago's Glenbrook North High School degrading into feces-hurling hazing.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Brin's Transparant Society is a great book (well, it's a really good book at least)- I'd recommend it. He makes a pretty powerful argument for his viewpoint.
As far as these cameras go- this is merely the beginning. As bandwidth increases and the gadgets improve, what you see at any given moment could be constantly recorded, saved to disk or sent to a friend. I suppose one day, we might develop this novelty to the point where you could "allow" access (if you so chose) to your "point of view" to anyone else at any time. Imagine wondering what's going on in, say- Cape Town. You access the net (where ever you are- on the street, in the park on the beach etc), run a quick search for users currently "online" in Cape Town and start looking at their perspectives of the city- shifting perspectives, "jumping" from one user to the next to experience the city from many different angles. Sound and statistical data would also be a logical add-on. Obviously, a user could unplug his point of view from the net whenever he wanted.
Some other applications of such a device would be as a personal safety system. Getting mugged? Show your attacker's face to several million of your close friends (and the police). He'd have no hope of getting away with it. The same for your kids- a kidnapper would have to be especially wary of such a device.
Possibilities are endless. Scary possibilities, true, but exciting ones as well. What's inevitable is- it's coming.
And guess what - it even makes phone calls!
He talks a lot about anonymity and privacy. For example, you are never so anonymous as you are on a crowded street. Sure, people could look at you, but why would anyone look at you in particular? And it's usually more embarrassing to get caught looking at another than to be looked at. It's the safety in numbers argument. Another way of viewing that problem is to imagine being the only one on a nude beach wearing a bathing suit. More people would look at you then than if you were in the buff as well (the bathing suit being a metaphor for a "wall of privacy").
He reckons the concept of privacy will continually be distorted to the point where only those who can afford the most expensive encryption will be able to enjoy it- ie privacy will be a luxury. The Mafia, the State and Mega Corporations will be able to enjoy total privacy- from you and from any other source of accountability- but the average Joe won't be able to have any privacy at all.
Another key here to is if we equate secrecy with privacy. There is a subtle but distinct difference between the two and he does a pretty good job illustrating that difference and spelling out the implications of legislating for one's perceived right to secrecy when we should rather protect privacy instead.
For sure, it's a sticky issue (privacy/secrecy and technological advances). Brin offers a pragmatic look at the problem that doesn't sit will with everyone but he does have a point when he says this phenomenom is coming and short of banning all further advances in certain fields of technology, there is practically nothing we can do to stop it. Better, perhaps, to come up with solutions that allow us to work and live with the technology (if it's inevitable anyway) than to revert to Luddism. In a few more years, the gov't will have deployed cameras that you won't be able to detect- they'll be too small. What are we going to do then?
LOL
Yes, it has polyphonic ring tones. More importantly, it's very good at finding marginal signals, which was the big drawback to last year's hot phone, the Ericsson 680i. I didn't have any problem with the circular pad. So far, the only problem I've seen is that the Enter function, which you get by pressing the circular scroll key dead center, is easy to confuse with one of the side arrow presses. It takes some practice to hit it square on.
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