Land of the free?
Not for a long time... We gave up on that experiment when the "radicals" of the 60's protested against the government's publicity campaign on the validity of the Vietnam War. Since then, there has been a steady retrograde of freedom of speech and the press. It's as bad today as it is in some other countries. Now, we do tolerate a great deal more on our TVs in terms of ridiculing our elected officials, the hyper-sexualization of content, etc. But I'm not sure that is the same thing as Freedom of Speech. Dissenting opinions are castigated, attacked, and vilified. Not sure there's any progress from the 50/60/70s as Srust claims. I just see it as a different method to the same objective.
And there is no rational debate, we have lost all right to our privacy. Much of it is by our voluntary participation, some by virtue of neglect, and lots by virtue of cyber trespassing.
Big data is a problem with unknown dangers. Trust me, the exponential evolution of technology is becoming untenable. We are creating tools with more power than we understand, with no ability to govern their use, or limit their penetration. Citing Eric Schmidt, "The internet is the first thing "man" has created that he can't control".
And it is the core of all electronic data. Now, Planet Labs will be establishing a ring of 100 down-looking satellites to take photos of the earth in real time, every second, and transmit those back to data centers for real time analysis. Anyone see the potential hazards here?
Forget about your driver's license, start worrying about the big things...
