Re: Transhuman fascists?

From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Wed Mar 29 2000 - 08:15:05 MST


On Tuesday, March 28, 2000 11:17 PM Zero Powers zero_powers@hotmail.com
wrote:
> >And so long as one person has a more powerful computer than another
> >person, 'power equivalent ubiquitous transparency' cannot possibly
> >exist, except as a propaganda piece used to dupe people into
> >surrendering their civil rights.
>
> As I explained in reply to your earlier message, computing power is
> virtually irrelevant when it comes to merely browsing an efficient
database.

As others have pointed out, it's not browsing but analyzing that's important
here. If watching were enough... Zero should, perhaps, read Angelo
Codevilla's _Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century_ (I
reviewed if a few years ago; my review is at:
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/IP1_Know.html) for examples of people in
intelligence organizations (the ones who are paid to look at such data and
draw valid conclusions from it) who knew stuff on a basic perceptual level,
yet weren't able to infer anything important from it.

I think what would happen with ubiquitous surveillance is that, for most
people, it would just be a constant flood of useless data.

Cheers!

Daniel Ust
http://mars.superlink.net/neptune/



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