Hey Kent: I hope you know I wish you well in your attempts to educate but the facts will be that this will begin voluntarily with all sorts of fun or other seemingly noble reasons. Expect this movement to pick up steam rapidly once it begins in earnest(which it appears we are on the front edge of). After what i expect to be a fairly short period of time, those who resist the urge to move with the herd 'will be' looked upon suspiciously and ultimately regarded as dangers to the 'community' at large. Perhaps we will be rounded up as mentally unstable. Probably for many other reason(s) too, depending on the audience. But also be assured there will be a publicity campaign to make all seem right and noble for the majority.

Edlorah: Different foundational world views simply demand different outcomes. For instance, if the scriptural world view I subscribe too is wrong, no harm comes to anyone else. However, if the scripture is correct, a great deal of the world at large(individually speaking) is in for an eternity of separation from God Almighty. As a rule, I don't wish that on anyone.

Another thought too is that Kent and I, to my knowledge, are not on the same page where it comes to God, Jesus or the the scriptural outcomes I expect. And yet!!! so many of our concerns for humanity overlap almost completely, it seems. I am sure you will correct me if I am wrong Kent;), but underneath your desire to know the truth(which we both believe IS knowable) is some type of a secular humanist philosophical foundation. Something quite polar to a scriptural world view. But, the facts are the facts, in our physical/worldly sense, if one wants to know the truth - however uncomfortable.

Naturally, which is unnatural to the normal human urges of the flesh(which does have a mind of its own), is to urge one and all to trust in Jesus Christ, He alone, trusting in His finished work of redemption of humanity on the cross. That's the only way out that I have found. At least in terms of an eternal outcome I find palitable.

Best wishes all.

RFID ramifications: I believe Kent mentioned inventory control but as opposed to bar codes, once every product is RFIDed, there will be no need for cashiers and probably no need for long lines in stores. As we are departing with our purchases, the radio frequency readers will simply note every product in your basket or bag. Which would be very cool, I think all would agree! But, those transmitters don't turn off once you make your purchase. So suppose there are RF readers along the interstate....

Certainly with ADSX products there is a GPS component. Undoubtedly there will be with the RFID's as the technology gets nanosized.

These things will put shoplifters out of business where they are applied. But will the savings be passed along to the consumer?

Naturally, your payment will also be made wirelessly. Which as with the shopping cards Kent mentioned, will tie your purchases to your identity. It's old news what can be determined about an individual by their check register, imagine how much more fun itemized information can be for the Nanny Government and their minions and business friends. And of course, this information will never be misused or insecure.

The following column from FredOnEverything.net provides a very readable and reasonable development of this overall scenario:

The Camera State

Reflections On Probable Technological Inevitability

July 21, 2003  

A looming question: Is today's a'bornin' surveillance state in America an aberration? Or is it the unavoidable future of mankind? A spasm, like Prohibition, the Sixties, McCarthyism? Or an inevitable consequence of technological advance-something that must follow the spread of computers and networking as remorselessly as suburbs and shopping malls followed the automobile? Do we have a choice?

The technology exists today for a degree of control, of watchfulness, of spying even, unimaginable two decades ago. You can buy most of the hardware at a shopping mall. We need only use what we have: the internet, cameras, software, electronics. Step by step, sometimes inadvertently, not always realizing the consequences, we begin to use it. I don't think it is controllable.

Think about it. The capacity to store and search information, to transmit it over any distance, is today for practical purposes unlimited. A lowly mail-order pc is so powerful that it is difficult to grasp just how powerful it is. Technically, wiring the world is only slightly harder than wiring a country. The very innocence of it all makes it insidious: The tools of an iron control come into existence for practical reasons of efficiency and convenience.

Vast, multitudinous, and efficient data bases are already kept on us, innocently, by Visa, the Social Security Administration, telephone companies, banks, the police, and hundreds of others. They do it for reasons of convenience and efficiency. It is not possible to argue against these. Yet…when once these repositories of information are in place, linking them is technically easy. The Pentagon wants to do it.

We all know about data bases. I don't think many people know about some of the other, spookier things that exist today in the world of surveillance. For example, there are chips called RFIDs (radio-frequency identification devices).* These, smaller than a grain of rice, transmit an identifying number when they pass an electronic reader. They are expected to cost perhaps five cents each in mass manufacture. Department stores want to use them for innocent purposes of inventory control. The readers can be inconspicuously built into almost anything. You don't know you are being tracked.

They are so cheap, so easy, so useful.

The government is probably not going to force us to build these chips into things so that it can watch us. We are going to do it ourselves, for reasons of practicality and convenience. For example, RFIDs built irremovably into automobiles, so that passing police cars could read them, would make car theft far more difficult. The serial of a stolen car would go electronically onto a watch list. Put readers in toll booths, in stop lights, or in gas stations, and stolen cars would become virtually undrivable.

Who could be against stopping theft of automobiles? But the same chips would allow the government to keep records of where your car was, when. They could also be used to calculate your speed and, should it be excessive, call the cops or send you a threatening letter. We would never be unwatched.

How much surveillance are we willing to bear in order to prevent how much crime?

(There is, or was, in the Virginia suburbs of Washington a stretch of road where speed monitoring was done, though not with RFIDs. A sign flashed something like: "Slow Down! You are making 47 mph!" It was unsettling, as it was to start to cross an intersection against a light when no traffic was coming, and then to realize that a camera was pointed at you.)

Constantly being watched is intimidating, whether you are doing anything wrong or not. More and more we are watched, everywhere. In Washington's subway, if you stand near the trackway, an officious busybody in the kiosk above will admonish you over the PA system to stand back. Cameras. You begin half-consciously tailoring your behavior to the desires of the unknown chaperones.

Presumably, overt dictatorships such as China will simply impose whatever surveillance they wish. Can the galloping growth of surveillance in the United States be controlled? I think not (though I'd love to be wrong), for several reasons.

First, there is no way to object. We are not really a democracy. With an aggressive president, a legislative branch sinking into impotence, and an all-powerful and unaccountable judiciary, the public has little recourse but to do as it is told. The government will just do what it wants.

Second, fear is an effective way to get people to give up independence, privacy, and freedom. It is being used, and it is working. Tell people that they are in danger, that they are being attacked or about to be attacked or might be attacked. Tell them that the government needs to watch every detail of their lives to protect them. Throw in a bit of theater about bomb shelters, survival kits, and duct tape to give a sense of immediacy. Test the air raid sirens every Monday.

America frightens easily. We are afraid of second-hand smoke, terrorists, plastic guns, and little boys who point their fingers and say "bang." It isn't the attitude of Davy Crockett, but neither is it the America of Davy Crockett. The United States is perhaps the world's most timid nation. It will accept much in the name of security. Once people get used to the loss of rights, it is almost impossible to get them back.

Third, the mechanisms of control go so painlessly into place. When the FBI was installing its software for monitoring email, there was a brief fuss, quickly forgotten. The software is still there. People got used to airport searches. Changes to obscure laws regarding warrantless access to records do not get attention beyond the beltway. The linking of data bases doesn't make a loud bang or produce a mushroom cloud.

Finally, how much do people really care about freedom? On average, not much. Give them three hundred channels on the cable, alcohol, food, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and they will be docile if not always precisely happy.

Americans sometimes like to think of themselves as hardy yeoman, freedom-loving individualists, Fifth Century Athenians with squirrel guns. No. Increasingly the country consists of a bored suburban peasantry, politically inert, apathetic, in intellectual decline, oscillating from cubicle to sofa. As long as the government doesn't crash through their doors, which it almost never will unless opposed, the cameras won't bother them.

There may be no way to avoid the surveillance state. People may or may not be happy with it. It may or may not be particularly oppressive. I think we are about to find out.

And a second that I found amusing and healthy:

Lie Back And Enjoy It

, semi-literately.

You Can't Change It, And It's A Fun Show. Have Passport Ready.

July 7, 2003  

I-Already-Feel-Safer Department: In the Washington Times I discover that some ditzbunny in the legislature of Annapolis, Maryland, wants to outlaw plastic guns. Yes. She's going to get rid of them rascals. It's because it will end crime.

Quoth the Times "Alderwoman Cynthia A. Carter, Democrat, [now that's a surprise] said the law would ban all toy guns except for clear, brightly colored plastic guns." Honest. She's doing this. "If someone commits a felony with one, they [sic] will not only be charged with the crime but also with using a toy gun," avowed she, semi-literately.

Oh, good, Cynthia. You're encouraging criminals to use real guns, so that they won't be hit with the plastic penalty also. Of course a chief reason for using plastic guns has been that, if caught, the criminal could say with reason that he wasn't threatening life. How very astute, Cynthia. In your credit I'll say that when it comes to thinking, you have one motingator set of hormones.

The good lady will also fine parents of children caught playing with plastic. "Anything that can be done to deglamorize guns is a plus," said Ellen O. Moyer, mayor of the city that is home to the Naval Academy.

Cynthia is a co-mother of the Political Redskins Effect, which is the aesthetic appreciation of really good catastrophe. I used to follow the Skins when they were having a good year. When they had a mediocre year, I slacked off. But when they had disastrous years, when the running backs went in the wrong direction and the quarterback threw only interceptions and every other play was a fumble--I followed them again. It was fun to see how bad they could be. I longed for more-humiliating mistakes, for impossible errors. Maybe it was sadistic, or traitorous, or maybe just a joy in parody.

I've come to feel the same way about American society. Slow decline is draining, but spectacular collapse invigorates. It's no longer anything to be upset about. It's entertainment. The season's lost anyway, no hope of the playoffs, so enjoy it. I fire up the computer every morning in hopes of finding some new and unexpected form of daft behavior, a new chuckle, some form of social self-parody that I never dreamed of.

My political philosophy these days is to favor the funniest candidate and the most absurd policy, just to watch what will happen. Don't delude yourself that this is an easy course. The principle of Greater Comedy does not make for casual choices.

If Hillary ran against George, for example, I'd be hard pressed to choose. On responsible terms, Hillary would easily be my choice. She would socialize the country, but George is Stalinizing it; she's lots brighter, less embarrassing, and doesn't want to be Arabia's mother. She doesn't want to put a camera in my bathroom.

But in terms of amusement, George wins. Hillary is just an old-line big-government Democrat, and boring. She would take the country in bad directions, but not interestingly bad ones. George and his buddies are turning the United States into the first state of total electronic control. It's a first-rate show. Face it: Watching the destruction of the world's greatest free government is much cooler that watching the snoring growth of federal departments.

Another recent headline: "Sayreville, New Jersey-AP -- You can't pretend your finger is a gun -- even if you're in kindergarten.

So says a federal appeals court in ruling that a New Jersey school district did not violate a kindergarten boy's free-speech rights by suspending him for threatening to shoot his friends during a game at recess."

Now that's what I like: Forty-weight solemn clownishness, the kind you could calk a roof with. A kid of maybe six points his finger, gets suspended, and it becomes an issue of freedom of speech to be decided by federal court. Only in America do courts concern themselves with the unfurling of a kindergartner's finger. (Personally, I think that kindergarteners ought to be fitted with sensors in case they point fingers when alone. Yes, digit monitors. All sorts of things can be done with fingers. I bet nobody else ever thought of that.)

It is well that Americans do not care what others think about them. As best I can tell, Mexicans find our behavior puzzling if not lunatic, and the French think it deliciously amusing. The Canadians follow the American lead and often are even nuttier. The Russians probably watch with a sense of looming nostalgia. They've been there, but without the humor.

Anyway, for those who prefer to enjoy the spectacle instead of opposing the inevitable, I suggest that the best course is to promote a coalition of male Republicans and female Democrats. These reliably display the most amusing traits of their sexes.

The Republican men, as for example BushCroft and Rumsfeld, bring to the table a peculiarly male arrogance and sense of godhead. Female arrogance tends to be social; male, military. Male insecurity takes a form slightly different n from the female: I suspect that those occupying the great double-wide on Pennsylvania Avenue worry that maybe size does matter, and they need to do something quick. They easily persuade themselves, in the absence of any real system of values, that their duty is to sweep away the smoldering ashes of the Constitution to make room for more microphones.

The female Democrats should manage the social burlesque. Being viscerally obsessed with security, security, security in a world that seems to be mysteriously but disturbingly somehow wrong, they will pass Niceness Legislation. The analysis will be emotional rather than rational. They won't know this. When the ill-conceived proves unworkable, they will insist on tighter controls on little boys, more bans on second-hand smoke, more intrusiveness in a flailing attempt to impose Niceness.

What I figure is, there's probably an alien Space Base somewhere, maybe on Jupiter, full of people with hairy green tentacles coming out of their heads and several eyes. And they're shooting Degradation Rays at the Earth. First they did Russia, which was already pretty degraded and didn't have far to go. Now they've got the US. They're beaming the footage back to wherever they live as a reality show.

Nothing else really explains what is happening. It's three-ring national apoptosis, the long leap from the Golden Gate. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make outrageously funny. We're there, and it's a splendid show.