No place unwatched: 21st Century hide and go seek

After I watched the replays of recent town hall meetings, one thing that stood out was the convenience of filming. In this age of distrust, apparently to prove innocence or truth, video and audio taping is necessary. Pictures that can prove are admissible evidence. These perpetual Internet traces will never disappear, yet we ignore the global dangers of taping.

What did Americans do before our technology bounce? During the '80s and '90s, the drive to film others never entered our minds. An evolving Internet gave Americans a way to gain notoriety and show the world what they had filmed. Now with suspicious minds, how will this affect our future? …

Americans never project the consequences of our actions. We see this daily through envisioning the World Wide Web. Americans break the law, then post it on the Internet with no consideration or forethought. Naïve impulse actions carry retributions beyond present day judgments. This carelessness is framing the world and America's future.

Today, cameras are everywhere. The eye in the sky is watching from above. Satellites offer a very lucid observation. The camera cell phones have a deceiving aspect; are they really just dialing? Delicately hidden and positioned security cameras are everywhere — stores, city streets, neighborhood watches — creating an endless state of mental alert.

There's no escaping the electric eye. People are monitoring locker rooms, bathrooms, even dressing rooms. People at malls, department stores, grocery stores are being filmed for others' viewing pleasure. This gives us a different prospective from the ground up, or the stairs down. …

Technology has given us abilities to communicate effortlessly. Also, equipment advancements have enabled us to spy with ease. How will this affect tomorrow? City governments have supplied the people with free municipal Internet. …

The government doesn't need to encourage a citizen watch; we have taken that incentive ourselves. Instantaneous Internet collated with rewards will motivate nonstop vigilance. All that's needed is free mandatory pocket computers and a government web ID.

The bar code came and went. The feared microchip was convenient, and inevitably top choice, but neither provided a means of corresponding. The pocket computer can GSP, communicate, take pictures, record videos, without any boundaries. The other devices required a point of reference to enable a transactional recording (scanner).

While Congress votes in October to infiltrate and control the Internet, this technology enables one person to control our life, nation, even the world.

— Jerry Soesbee
Asheville

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2 thoughts on “No place unwatched: 21st Century hide and go seek

  1. Betty Cloer Wallace

    Like frogs boiled in water, we have gradually become complicit in allowing (even expecting) our every moment to be recorded and our lives available for the whole world to invade.

    With cameras everywhere, electronic “paper trails” recording every aspect of our lives, online social networking, and acceptance of routine law-enforcement roadblocks (with nary a protest), we have relinquished individual freedom for pseudo-security, privacy for public exposure, individuality for commonness, and personal reservation for exhibitionism and voyeurism.

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