You know the drill. I’m skipping the stuff that deals with Bush, Harper, or books, which should get their own posts. I had a weird fascination with Cass Elliot for a while there, primarily as a reaction to how much I was digging her tune California Earthquake. There were some weird side effects of this, from the relatively obvious, like… Read more →
Tag: surveillance
It’s actually not a joke, although it’s easy to come up with a punchline
I’ve been quick to criticize American history for HUAC, and CoIntelPro, and the general internal espionage of the early FBI, as well not recognizing the lessons of history when they swing around again, so I should probably also point out that we do a lot of the same stuff. As you can see in the story that broke this week… Read more →
Organizational Pathology
Did you see the ACLU press release today about how the American terrorist watch list now has more than one million people on it? “America’s new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and… Read more →
“Long Weekend” Bag of Links
I put it in scare quotes because I am a member of the global information economy, and apparently what that means is that I have to take some meetings on those holidays that are merely national in scope. Yes, I am a grumpy about this. Well, honestly I’m mostly grumpy about having to be up in time for an 8AM… Read more →
SurveillanceSaver again
Following up from the recent post on SurveillanceSaver, I saw that very talented writer M. John Harrison had also been playing with it. Just let me quote him: after a bit, the narrative possibilities collapse, the intensity of your gaze subsides & these are just empty corners of the world again. It’s a bit like hitch-hiking & not getting a… Read more →
Making The Point With Art
I could write a dozen blog posts about living in the surveillance society, and not make the point as clearly as Michael Zoellner did by writing SurveillanceSaver. There’s nothing that will drive home the point that we’re in the midst of omni-surveillance like someone adapting some of the information flowing from that constant surveillance into casual artOK, maybe it’s a… Read more →
