In 1956 a story by Isaac Asimov was published in Astounding Science Fiction, titled "The Dead Past". The story, ostensibly about Government control of acadamic research, is also a horror piece in which privacy is effectively destroyed through the invention of the chronoscope, a device that can look into the past. And since five minutes ago is the past, that means the chronoscope can see everything.
We are quickly headed toward that future, in which there is no privacy because all of the details of anyone's life, actions, beliefs, acquaintances, and shortcomings can be known by anyone else, anywhere in the world, at any time. Exhibit #1 is Facebook, which is suspected of or has been discovered
keeping "shadow profiles" on pretty much everyone on the planet. It doesn't matter whether you have a Facebook account or not. They have a file on you anyway.
While internet stalking, by neighbors, ISPs, criminals, police, or whoever, is creepy, there have been proposals in the United Kingdom to make the contents of all computer subject to police inspection at any time. Separately, EU MEP Tiziano Motti of Italy has
proposed that black boxes be installed on all computers so that police can detect criminal activity automatically. Clearly, given the nature of computers that means that each hard drive would be an open book. And
given the nature of mankind, that means the contents of each hard drive would then be available for sale on the black market.
Exhibit #2 is the evolution of face recognition algorithms that can attach names to faces in a photo of a crowd. Depending on which software, company, interest group, or programmer you speak to the current rate of success is anywhere from poor to
scary. Google has built facial recognition into Picasa, and claims to have backed off on some uses of the technology on the web because it was scary. The Carnegie Mellon lab that developed PittPatt has been
acquired by Google. Facebook has put facial recognition into its software to help people tag others in their photographs. Governments use face recognition at customs to save time spotting terrorists and miscreants. With the proliferation of cameras on city streets, the low price of cameras, and the rapidly declining cost of processors to perform facial recognition on video streams, it is conceivable that real-time citywide monitoring of citizen locations is not very far off.
So whether you are an introverted stay-at-home computer user, or an extroverted on-the-go social butterfly, the future is clearly heading in the direction of
keeping close tabs on everything you are doing, whatever its religious or political leaning.
In July, my comment about
reputation shredding mentioned a reliance on anonymity for bad actors to cause damage to people falsely accused. With sufficient surveillance and the preponderance of public opinion on your side, however, you wouldn't need to be anonymous at all, because you would have the approval of the majority, and being mean to people isn't against the law.
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For those who are interested, here are some links to materials about The Dead Past.
IMDB entry about the BBC dramatization of the short story (part 1 of 7):
