From: Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Date: Wed Apr 05 2000 - 23:17:22 MDT
> > I bet we could rig a device that would flip your license plate around
> > and randomly generate a known-unused number. That would fix
> > em. {8^D spike
> James Rogers wrote:
> Like a color LCD in an appropriate looking frame perhaps? That would be
> cool. Not only could you change your license plate, but you could change
> your state on the fly as well. And you registration tags would always be
> current.
Cool idea James. It occurred to me that we have fallen into the classic
enginerd thinking mode of machine vs machine. Ever since we started
the universal surveillance debate I have been thinking of ways to defeat
the cams, then ways for the cams to defeat those who would defeat
them, etc.
In all these cases, the rich and techno-haves always win. There have
been several posts regarding how the advantages acrue to this crowd,
and Ive found no way around it. The poor and techno-havenots lose
every round. I cannot find a way around it. Even if we manage to
get laws to prevent governments from getting surveillance, the poor
and technots *still* lose, since the tiny and low cost cams become
universal anyway, and end up mostly in the hands of the well off
and techies.
So let me go off in another direction. Perhaps it is *OK* that
new-tech is not society's great equalizer, but is in fact yet another great
unequalizer. The digital divide grows. Is it OK? Why not?
In your mind's eye think of the group of people who learned to
use computers vs those who did not. Which group is better
adapted to modern life? Easy question, now consider we are
about to see the next round with the wearable computers. It
is 1980 all over again. Then it was the new desktop computers.
Now it is the palm pilots and their logical descendants the
wearables. Getting these gadgets and learning to use them
will divide the haves from the have nots even more than now.
Right? You and I are cool with that because we are the techies.
I hope one of our sociologist gurus will speculate on where it
all leads. spike
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