http://www.rttnews.com/2243326/manchin-compares-nsa-surveillance-to-big-brother.aspx?type=gn&utm_source=google&utm_campaign=sitemap
relinked from Google US News headlines.
The problem I think this problem is not only extended to public spheres but also private ones as well.
I've said before technology could be the primary culprit for this, if it weren't easy enough now to find social spheres revealing through social networking information about your private lives (whether accidental or not), it is much easier for anyone, even private individuals/groups to spy on one's activities and whereabouts. The larger the number of individuals in a social context also yields greater likelihood that someone may know something about any particular intention otherwise. A birthday party, for instance, where someone says online he so and so is having a birthday, providing some estimable calculation that someone in a given social group related to so and so, is likely to be in attendance. Social networking is really in many ways an anathema to personal privacy, especially today where some networking sites neither provide or at least have provided privacy to posting in general. If decades ago, the practicality and legalities aspect of private surveillance and information gathering about information were a concern, today looking people up through social networking or blog (such as this ) makes it only that much more cheap and free...or in other words, it is apparently easier then ever in most cases, to engage in surveillance.
While in the past I believe I've mentioned the novel "The Light of Other Days", another twist on an emergent Orwellian dystopia, it points to something of another possibility concerning social evolution of our culture...that is, if we weren't there to bludgeon one another into a social conformity and subservience, we might instead enter into a phase, where we are more numbed to the social experiences of others (could care less what others think and do)...of course, this could be an asset given that it makes it harder for anyone person/government/social institutions, so forth to drive social dogmas at any given time, but that also the normative nature of culture might change with it...for instance, where people see more arbitrarily the nature of personal law.
It seems in this day and age to me, and this were wholly personal view, that at times this emerging 'Big Brother' society vacillates paradoxically between apathy and a tool for social bludgeon, then it ever has. Don't get me wrong I don't sympathize with high paid stars of reality television (as if we need more already to peer into the supposedly private lives of others) that speak openly and publicly to the extent of their particular religious views which digress from religious to personal ones, its the often the quieter lives that are more likely hurt by surveillance/spying. While on the one hand, that any social campaign is popular waged for the sake anti-bullying, the bullying is being waged, and in its supposed defense everything from Freedom of Speech (there again, a mega star likely to be picked up elsewhere, not likely to lose his job, his livelihood, his freedom, or generally be blacklisted?! jailed, falsely accused ), or that political correctness were such a problem otherwise, while people literally suffer for any given view and were wholly law abiding? And how does the problem of Big Brother relate to political correctness and freedom of speech in so far as the defense of the destruction of lives (either in attempt or otherwise), false witness, character assassination, distortions, and utter contempt for personal privacy?
relinked from Google US News headlines.
The problem I think this problem is not only extended to public spheres but also private ones as well.
I've said before technology could be the primary culprit for this, if it weren't easy enough now to find social spheres revealing through social networking information about your private lives (whether accidental or not), it is much easier for anyone, even private individuals/groups to spy on one's activities and whereabouts. The larger the number of individuals in a social context also yields greater likelihood that someone may know something about any particular intention otherwise. A birthday party, for instance, where someone says online he so and so is having a birthday, providing some estimable calculation that someone in a given social group related to so and so, is likely to be in attendance. Social networking is really in many ways an anathema to personal privacy, especially today where some networking sites neither provide or at least have provided privacy to posting in general. If decades ago, the practicality and legalities aspect of private surveillance and information gathering about information were a concern, today looking people up through social networking or blog (such as this ) makes it only that much more cheap and free...or in other words, it is apparently easier then ever in most cases, to engage in surveillance.
While in the past I believe I've mentioned the novel "The Light of Other Days", another twist on an emergent Orwellian dystopia, it points to something of another possibility concerning social evolution of our culture...that is, if we weren't there to bludgeon one another into a social conformity and subservience, we might instead enter into a phase, where we are more numbed to the social experiences of others (could care less what others think and do)...of course, this could be an asset given that it makes it harder for anyone person/government/social institutions, so forth to drive social dogmas at any given time, but that also the normative nature of culture might change with it...for instance, where people see more arbitrarily the nature of personal law.
It seems in this day and age to me, and this were wholly personal view, that at times this emerging 'Big Brother' society vacillates paradoxically between apathy and a tool for social bludgeon, then it ever has. Don't get me wrong I don't sympathize with high paid stars of reality television (as if we need more already to peer into the supposedly private lives of others) that speak openly and publicly to the extent of their particular religious views which digress from religious to personal ones, its the often the quieter lives that are more likely hurt by surveillance/spying. While on the one hand, that any social campaign is popular waged for the sake anti-bullying, the bullying is being waged, and in its supposed defense everything from Freedom of Speech (there again, a mega star likely to be picked up elsewhere, not likely to lose his job, his livelihood, his freedom, or generally be blacklisted?! jailed, falsely accused ), or that political correctness were such a problem otherwise, while people literally suffer for any given view and were wholly law abiding? And how does the problem of Big Brother relate to political correctness and freedom of speech in so far as the defense of the destruction of lives (either in attempt or otherwise), false witness, character assassination, distortions, and utter contempt for personal privacy?
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