In Eugene Zamiatin's We.
It helps us realize the importance of privacy, which is the ability to escape control and violate law, custom, and the expectations of others whose expectations matter, unbeknownst to anyone we choose to keep - or rather leave - in the dark, in safety and with impunity.
This is a crucial aspect of liberty that is never discussed with candor.
When I was a lad I bought books for cash at stores where no one knew me.
I never had or wanted a credit card until I was more than 30, and checking account debit cards did not come into general use for years after that.
But now my credit card bank knows nearly everything I buy and where I buy it.
My phone, tablet, and auto navigation device all have GPS.
My grocer knows my eating habits and what my wife smokes.
Amazon and B&N know nearly all the books I buy and the library knows what I borrow.
I believe the country is working toward everyone having a single, on-line medical record with the whole scoop in it.
Computers and the net have put privacy in the gravest possible danger and, coupled with foolish police and intelligence measures adopted to deal with the much inflated threat of Muslim terrorism, have vastly diminished our ability to safely ignore and disobey government.
This is the kind of Big Government Republicans especially but office holders and government agents generally, especially in the forces of order, very strongly favor.
Politicians will tell you that in the face of all this they can and will protect privacy, but that is pretty much always boilerplate.
They do not value disobedience.
They do not cherish its possibly, much less its widespread and far-ranging reality.
Good Lord.
Street membranes!
I offer this comment only in an effort to cheer you up! It is, in the words of Sellars & Yeatman, "A Good Thing" that your local shop, and indeed other suppliers, know your likes and desires in order better to supply your needs. Also, I have a suspicion that people who raise constant alarums about 'Big Government' invading their privacy are somewhat exaggerating their own importance. By and large, 'Big Government' doesn't give a stuff about your boring life - sad but true.
ReplyDeleteSo, how's London, these days, the most surveilled city in the world? You really think those cameras are all bluff, eh? Like a man with no dog putting up a "Beware of the Dog" sign?
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