Stalker (2002)
Think stalking is bad on a per person basis? Wait until it's a Borg-collective mindset and institutionalized as policy.
[Cartoon by Ruben Bolling from Salon]
So a majority of Americans are okay with having their phone conversations hunted and gathered by their own government? That concerns me until I consider that the majority of Americans believe:
--God created humans in their present form.
--religion is "under attack."
--in the Devil.
--in miracles.
--Fox News is a trustworthy news source.
Therefore...
I've been watching with keen interest since the first NSA scandal: I've noticed on the Internet that there aren't many people really shocked by this. Our popular culture, our dirt-ball street culture teaches us from childhood that the CIA is listening to *all* of our telephone calls and reading *all* of our email anyway...
...In the very long view, this will turn out to be about how we deal with the technological situation we find ourselves in now. We've gotten somewhere we've never been before. It's very interesting. In the short term, I've taken the position that it's very, very illegal and I hope something is done about it.
--Neuromancer author William Gibson. Seen on Beyond Robson.
[Image seen on JWR]
2 comments:
You know the story. Stalker brought three bureaucrats into the Zone, that circle of nature where the fallout could not reach, and pointed: "See! See! See!" But the mathematician could not connect the dots into any practical syllogism, the physicist could not find beauty in those rotting cinder-blocks known as galaxies, and the poet could not acknowledge any power mightier than the pen, even when an invisible hand stroked fields of grasses into billowing waves. An evil dog skuttled away from them and sulked over broken puddles that reflected branches of trees now long vanished. Stalker ripped both eyes out and held them bleeding in his outstretched palms, but the three intellectual vagrants only laughed, mocking his self-sacrifice in a world indifferent to meaning.
Cool stalker prose.
Nice to see Glenda stop by. Thanks for leaving a comment.
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