Well, Peter, a lot of us did make such predictions 30 years ago. It's just a matter of drawing logical conculsions from what the existing technology can be used for, and hw cost-efficient the monitoring system can be set up.
It could have been done with pen&paper too, as witnessed during rationing. All the electronic system does, is make…
Well, Peter, a lot of us did make such predictions 30 years ago. It's just a matter of drawing logical conculsions from what the existing technology can be used for, and hw cost-efficient the monitoring system can be set up.
It could have been done with pen&paper too, as witnessed during rationing. All the electronic system does, is make it easier for the corporate structure to control everything and everyone it wants to.
You will soon see the EU-madate on all cars having onboard always online data-gathering devices installed: no more speed traps, your account gets debited automatically. Your CO2-emissions tax can be drawn directly based on your driving history. And as modern cars are basically computers on wheels, the extra fees for driving alone can easily be imposed to, the car knows how heavy a load it's carrying after all. And don't think to cheat by loading a hockeytrunk of bricks - the car's onboard unable to be switched off camera will see you. For your safety, of course.
You can expect to see the same in each and every sector, niche, alcove, arena, whatever where global capitaists, banking clans, and corporatist governements can reach and profit from imposing it - and 19 out of 20 will happily and merrily go along while praising it as progress. It's so much more convenient. So easy nowadays. Just think of all things you used to have to keep in your head or purse all the time, codes and keys and spare cash and so on. So much easier now that Friend Computer is managing things.
In such a society, you have three realistic and one romantic option:
1) Leave, emigrate and resettle out of reach. It will become impossible sooner or later.
2) Join and be useful to the system. Very comfortable and you can build quite the career out of helping the system along, no matter if it is as an enfrocer or a white-collar worker drone.
3) Step outside the system. Be unprofitable, unthreatening, unchallenging and of no interest to the system. Call it the Svejk or Amish option. Long as you don't threaten the system or starts building a better alternative, you'll be left alone along your fellow outsiders - look at how the gypsies and the jews have done it for the past 1 000 years all over the world.
4) Openly challenge and fight and rebel against the system. (This is the romantic option, and about as realistic as a random Ivan taking on the USSR in 1955.)
I'd argue option 3, since such a system as the one established since the mid-1980s must collapse under it's own weight or be crushed by an external force: it cannot be reformed by itself or challenged from within.
By fighting the system as it settles in to rule, we help it evolve better and better tools and more fine-tuned responses to challenges. We, all who oppose it, must be like the ants when they kill a large tree bazillions of times their own size. A little bite here, a little fungus introduced there, a new colony over there. And eventually the once mighty oak is but a hollowed-out shell blown over by a stiff breeze.
No promises us ants today will ever see it happen, but if we don't do it it won't happen at all.
Well, Peter, a lot of us did make such predictions 30 years ago. It's just a matter of drawing logical conculsions from what the existing technology can be used for, and hw cost-efficient the monitoring system can be set up.
It could have been done with pen&paper too, as witnessed during rationing. All the electronic system does, is make it easier for the corporate structure to control everything and everyone it wants to.
You will soon see the EU-madate on all cars having onboard always online data-gathering devices installed: no more speed traps, your account gets debited automatically. Your CO2-emissions tax can be drawn directly based on your driving history. And as modern cars are basically computers on wheels, the extra fees for driving alone can easily be imposed to, the car knows how heavy a load it's carrying after all. And don't think to cheat by loading a hockeytrunk of bricks - the car's onboard unable to be switched off camera will see you. For your safety, of course.
You can expect to see the same in each and every sector, niche, alcove, arena, whatever where global capitaists, banking clans, and corporatist governements can reach and profit from imposing it - and 19 out of 20 will happily and merrily go along while praising it as progress. It's so much more convenient. So easy nowadays. Just think of all things you used to have to keep in your head or purse all the time, codes and keys and spare cash and so on. So much easier now that Friend Computer is managing things.
In such a society, you have three realistic and one romantic option:
1) Leave, emigrate and resettle out of reach. It will become impossible sooner or later.
2) Join and be useful to the system. Very comfortable and you can build quite the career out of helping the system along, no matter if it is as an enfrocer or a white-collar worker drone.
3) Step outside the system. Be unprofitable, unthreatening, unchallenging and of no interest to the system. Call it the Svejk or Amish option. Long as you don't threaten the system or starts building a better alternative, you'll be left alone along your fellow outsiders - look at how the gypsies and the jews have done it for the past 1 000 years all over the world.
4) Openly challenge and fight and rebel against the system. (This is the romantic option, and about as realistic as a random Ivan taking on the USSR in 1955.)
I'd argue option 3, since such a system as the one established since the mid-1980s must collapse under it's own weight or be crushed by an external force: it cannot be reformed by itself or challenged from within.
By fighting the system as it settles in to rule, we help it evolve better and better tools and more fine-tuned responses to challenges. We, all who oppose it, must be like the ants when they kill a large tree bazillions of times their own size. A little bite here, a little fungus introduced there, a new colony over there. And eventually the once mighty oak is but a hollowed-out shell blown over by a stiff breeze.
No promises us ants today will ever see it happen, but if we don't do it it won't happen at all.