"They've actually made wearing a tracking tag a rewarding experience. Of course it's entirely voluntary, keeping count of entrants and exits can be justified as a safety measure, and it saves you from having to carry cash around in your swimsuit ... but, but, tagging...After you stop spluttering with indignation, you realize that it's an inevitable part of this package..."
I am still waiting for this experience, where I realize that humans must be tagged and tracked like animals. So far it hasn't come.
We've taken combat-trained soliders -- many times with live weapons -- and put them on airplanes and flown them around the world. Nobody needed tagging. We've had random groups of strangers thrown into lifeboats after various maritime disasters. Nobody needed tagging. We have all kinds of examples where one bad individual might cause great harm to others, yet taqgging was not an answer.
The only reason we're talking about tagging now is because the tech is here. It's convenient -- and much easier than trying to figure out how to have a civil society. Screw getting governments more responsive: just treat all of the citizens as potential criminals.
The Panopticon is not the answer, for ludicrously simple reasons that any half-educated person should be able to ascertain.
In NL they replaced a perfectly good system for train tickets based on paper with an electronic one that is failure prone but allows the operators to track the movements of half the population.
I am still waiting for this experience, where I realize that humans must be tagged and tracked like animals. So far it hasn't come.
We've taken combat-trained soliders -- many times with live weapons -- and put them on airplanes and flown them around the world. Nobody needed tagging. We've had random groups of strangers thrown into lifeboats after various maritime disasters. Nobody needed tagging. We have all kinds of examples where one bad individual might cause great harm to others, yet taqgging was not an answer.
The only reason we're talking about tagging now is because the tech is here. It's convenient -- and much easier than trying to figure out how to have a civil society. Screw getting governments more responsive: just treat all of the citizens as potential criminals.
The Panopticon is not the answer, for ludicrously simple reasons that any half-educated person should be able to ascertain.
</rant>