Our parents' generation had the privilege of living most of their lives without vast amounts of their private thoughts and moments uploaded to the World Wide Web, to be stored in perpetuity.
(With current technology, data centers which hold our digitized lives grow larger and more numerous, while using extensive amounts of energy. See "Power, Pollution and the Internet," New York Times.)
My generation had the privilege of having most of our youth undigitized.
For the most part, our childhoods belonged to us and our families.
But today, when our babies are born, their pictures are immediately uploaded to the World Wide Web.
Our children's first steps are recorded, along with the entirety of their childhood, before our children can choose.
And when our children become teenagers, they begin uploading their thoughts and feelings.
Computer technology, growing more powerful, will have more ways to analyze massive amounts of long stored data, to possibly predict and affect human emotions and behavior.
I'm particularly concerned with the growing capabilities of brain scanning. As Elizabeth Landau reports in an April 2014 CNN article, "For instance, using fMRI scans, scientists can reconstruct a face that a person is viewing, as reported in a March 2014 study in the journal Neuroimage."
What will happen to humanity when we lose even our most private thoughts? I address the issue of possible future methods of technological mind-reading in the context of utopian promises ("total connection") in book three, "Colossus," and book four, "Inferno," of "The STARLING Connection."
I wrote "The STARLING Connection" to tackle the profound issues of our time "head on" and to encourage friends-Humanity I love to fully consider not only the grand promises of the "Information Age," but also to think about all of the issues and possible consequences...
Here is our beloved friend, humanity's next generation, our grandson or great-grandson, 15-year-old Simon Laramie, speaking from Briarwood, U.S.A. a mere 30 years from now, in the year 2045:
(With current technology, data centers which hold our digitized lives grow larger and more numerous, while using extensive amounts of energy. See "Power, Pollution and the Internet," New York Times.)
My generation had the privilege of having most of our youth undigitized.
For the most part, our childhoods belonged to us and our families.
But today, when our babies are born, their pictures are immediately uploaded to the World Wide Web.
Our children's first steps are recorded, along with the entirety of their childhood, before our children can choose.
And when our children become teenagers, they begin uploading their thoughts and feelings.
- Who controls this information? Who profits from our information?
- How exactly will our information be used in the future and to what purpose?
- What rights do individuals have over the information which they create by virtue of their lives and work?
Computer technology, growing more powerful, will have more ways to analyze massive amounts of long stored data, to possibly predict and affect human emotions and behavior.
- Is it possible a computer, or whomever or whatever ultimately controls a corporation or state, or a global network or global plantation, could one day "know" more about individuals than individuals know about themselves?
- Are we living in an era of "digital freedom"?
- Or are we sinking deeper into a more entrenched era of modern slavery, enabled by ever-faster paced, increasingly powerful technologies?
I'm particularly concerned with the growing capabilities of brain scanning. As Elizabeth Landau reports in an April 2014 CNN article, "For instance, using fMRI scans, scientists can reconstruct a face that a person is viewing, as reported in a March 2014 study in the journal Neuroimage."
What will happen to humanity when we lose even our most private thoughts? I address the issue of possible future methods of technological mind-reading in the context of utopian promises ("total connection") in book three, "Colossus," and book four, "Inferno," of "The STARLING Connection."
I wrote "The STARLING Connection" to tackle the profound issues of our time "head on" and to encourage friends-Humanity I love to fully consider not only the grand promises of the "Information Age," but also to think about all of the issues and possible consequences...
Here is our beloved friend, humanity's next generation, our grandson or great-grandson, 15-year-old Simon Laramie, speaking from Briarwood, U.S.A. a mere 30 years from now, in the year 2045:
It kind of sucks I have to spend all this time encrypting my personal thoughts.
I have to remember everything and go over it and over it in my head. There are so many things that are true that you just can’t say out loud to people in public, or even to your family or friends.
You can’t say out loud any of this stuff that most people know is true. And you sure can’t post anything publicly about it on SUPERNET.
But at the same time, you can’t stop thinking about it either. It just kind of tears you up inside. You have to find some way to let it out. I guess that’s why I got into all this hacker stuff; you know, coding, in the first place, just so I can find a way to keep what’s on my mind without everyone everywhere instantly seeing everything I’ve ever thought.
PATRIOT SECURITY calls kids like me “hackers” because we aren’t supposed to be encrypting our private thoughts, even if it’s just stuff we create for ourselves.
Some of us only trade our thoughts with other “hackers.” There’s no money or retina-scan involved when you’re a hacker. It’s barter. I like that a lot. Trading’s more fun, and better than money. You just trade a thought for a thought.
Trading thoughts person to person is illegal on SUPERNET. There’s no way to send private messages unless you know some way to hack. You can put a secret code into a public post, but even that’s dangerous.
The supercomputers flag anything suspicious, so you have to really know what you’re doing if you try anything like that.
This excerpt represents a continuation of my 2015 gift-giving to friends & readers: #free excerpts of the first four chapters of "The STARLING Connection" here on theodorewebb.com. (Scroll down for previous excerpts...)
If you'd like to jump ahead & read the whole second chapter, "Being Different," then go to "The STARLING Connection" on Amazon, click the e-book's cover pic, scroll down & read away!
If you'd like to jump ahead & read the whole second chapter, "Being Different," then go to "The STARLING Connection" on Amazon, click the e-book's cover pic, scroll down & read away!
What if your every thought were public?
What if you were criminalized for keeping your thoughts private?
Read "The STARLING Connection."
Click pic to read!
