revolt of the washing machines and peace on earth are bit more appropriate I think but in general the master had predicted quite some of the things that become reality.

what work? The way this is going these days is that due to interdependent changes in economy, technology, organization etc the masses will be less and less employable. Other than that the diagnosis with tyranny is correct, I think.

I recall reading "The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate The World" in 2011 and thinking how this can evolve and what about things Morozov did not write, because he maybe did not know (or did not dare to write, being afraid of tin foil hat label etc). I have also an impression that in the world so small as ours (thanx to technology) some means of using the streams of data is needed anyway. Not only for terrorists but also for normal criminals. They use technology too and combating them in old fashion way is increasingly impossible. Checks and balances - that is the way to go. But then there are some tiny little problems, namely with democracy itself. We know now how silly it is to believe that our voices count - they do not. We may vote one asshole out of the office (not an easy feat but still possible) but what to do between elections? What about policies that we disagree with and which are anyway introduced?

Quite frankly, when I think about decisions our Great Leaders make (for the sake of democracy, human rights and their corporate friends), I have this sickening feeling of the past long gone - when for instance questions about discrepancies in party approved history books could mean no access to university (fortunately for me communism fell before this happened).

So there is a chance to get a low id number. I thought this site was a prank but if it still exists I may consider moving. OC the asshats that make any discussion impossible (like the ones discussing their dirty visions and Linus's weight gain here) may be tempted too, which is unfortunate.

yes you can misinterpret your data as we know gun lovers often do.

This and your government already oppresses your and other people - so how your guns stopped that? Maybe I missed that in the news - I lately cannot stand all the shit that is being 'reported' - but organized militia regularly fails to show up, when people are killed while SWAT teams invade their homes. Somehow I have a feeling that if your militia did show up then it would have to be really well organized not to directly die in a storm of fire. Care to explain this?

Not that we have much choice about that but if you can see with relative clarity what side effects a technology can have then it is good to think about those consequences so that in case they are clearly negative we can do something about that more effectively. This goes for instance for what some call internet security which means any issue associated with use pipes that can have detrimental effects on person's well being due to malicious activity of third party. You could not prevent all of it of course but maybe we would have to deal with less problems or maybe different ones. Still I would like to have benefits of current technology without for instance being made transparent to anybody with money and power etc.

in other words dealing with problems after they became real although one could see them coming is just silly.

some of these geek people have serious psychological issues of which some may be useful when coding. Calling that a culture is silly and does not do any good.

I did stalk my first ex before I learned tha this is bad and spooky for the subject of stalking. I was just leaving flowers at her door. This in our old traditions was actually appreciated and a sigin of courtship. Today it means I am a perv. I am less and less convinced that societal development we see we can call progress. Some of that maybe - like less acceptance for violence against some group etc. But if that is bound with grand silliness then accepting that en block is just counter productive.

I respect all people the same i.e. not all that much due to their stupidity. That includes meself.

By nature big proportion of males have high interest in female bodies. If it were not so we would not be here to discuss that. Stop it and human kind dissapears. I do not mind all that much actually.

how true. It is all a flamebait but it has an entertainment value.

It is also a nice exercise to think about consequences of getting rid of male sex drive alltogether. It would be actually good to think about that before thinking about how to get there.... But then again that is my perverted brain. I am male after all.

I missed sarcasm and web2.0 too - stopped reading at the word starting wioth c and ending with loud. Not sure why.... Must be late hour or so because GGP post was actually worth reading in whole.

so we have truly unbiased and non-discriminatory society where built-in attributes like gender and race play no role. Fantastic news! Pity majority of us cannot even dream of socializing with this noble group of people....

so the aliens have been bombing mars and now we discuss precision of their meteoring mars so that our united space command can ask for funds to waste them on on not working deflections systems?

'when given opportunity' is a key phrase. Society that is by principle and openly hard on crime to keep children safe and all these other things, goes quite close to giving a hint that this i.e. treating others like trash will be tolerated behaviour. Add to this overcrowding and privatization of penal system and you get a perfect situation when the condition you stated is almost always true. It is in fact a wonder that terrible things do not happen more often.

sounds like the land of the free that the Grounding Fathers envisioned