Sunday, January 18, 2009

Separated at Birth?


I found this old shot of me in University where I look a lot like Orwell. Strange!
Take a look at this essay about Big Brother versus Little Brother from security guru Bruce Schneier.

Big Brother isn’t what he used to be. George Orwell extrapolated his totalitarian state from the 1940s. Today’s information society looks nothing like Orwell’s world, and watching and intimidating a population today isn’t anything like what Winston Smith experienced.

1984’s police state was centralized; today’s is decentralized. Your phone company knows who you talk to, your credit card company knows where you shop and NetFlix knows what you watch. Your ISP can read your email, your cell phone can track your movements and your supermarket can monitor your purchasing patterns. There’s no single government entity bringing this together, but there doesn’t have to be. As Neal Stephenson said, the threat is no longer Big Brother, but instead thousands of Little Brothers.

The fear isn’t an Orwellian government deliberately creating the ultimate totalitarian state… It’s that we’re doing it ourselves, as a natural byproduct of the information society.


Rest of essay here. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/05/is_big_brother_1.html

1 comment:

J.level said...

You do look alot like George Orwell.
My friend Tomas in Oviedo, Spain, he lost his eye
I will pass this site along. A freak. What the brother could film...
Cool stuff you do man, really.

J.Level