:: Event Horizon ::

:: Friday, July 26, 2002 ::

The Societal Costs of Surveillance
This is a thoughtful op-ed piece by Michele Kayal in today’s New York Times. She has some interesting insight into the proposed citizens informant system based on her experience living in Prague in the early ‘90s. Her encounters with her friendly neighborhood spies leads her to conclude that, “…stoking people's fear to set neighbor upon neighbor, service worker upon client, those who belong against those who don't, does something more: it erodes the soul of the watcher and the watched, replacing healthy national pride with mute suspicion, breeding insular individuals more concerned with self-preservation than with society at large. Ultimately it creates a climate that is inherently antithetical to security.” It’s a cautionary warning worth our consideration as we continue to define the new normal.

:: Joel 2:22 PM [+] ::
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Net Users Try to Elude the Google Grasp
An interesting article in the New York Times today on life in the Internet Age. It seems that people have been Googling each other, a lot. Yes, people actually look up coworkers, romantic interests, friends and neighbors on Google and other similar Internet search engines. The article notes that a huge amount of information is now online and that once it is there it is very difficult, if not impossible, to remove. I was most interested in the comments from David Brin, the sci-fi writer, who suggests that we are moving back toward the village model of life where everyone knows (or can know) everyone else. It's interesting that the dawn of the 21st Century should take us back to a preindustrial social structure. Welcome to the global village. Out of curiosity, I Googled myself using "Joel Davis" as the search term and found that (drum-roll here) I am the first return in the search results. Yes, I am the #1 Joel Davis in the world, or at least in the Google world. After reading this article I have to wonder if that is indeed a good thing. I'm followed in the search results by a writer of dog books (I didn't even know dogs read, but I'm not surprised, as my cat does, those subscriptions to Cat Life are getting out of control), followed by a major league baseball player with the Chicago White Sox, followed by professional wrestler (whose web page nearly froze my computer with an annoying sound file), and the top five are rounded out by an English professor at the University of Oregon. Those are only the top ranked results, the search itself returned 3,710 hits. I have to say that after reading this article, I will be much more cautious about the information about myself that I make available online.

:: Joel 2:52 PM [+] ::
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Scientists, Dreamers Continue Refining Ideas for Future Lunar Bases
I mentioned in an earlier entry that I have an interest in space exploration. There are many plans out there for a dynamic exploration program, and one of the most promising is a proposal to return to the Moon, this time to stay. I know that there doesn't seem to be much political will behind space exploration these days, but I do agree with this article that there are some real issues of planetary security at stake, and having an off-world base in one way to ensure the continuity of civilization. With the threat to Earth from near-Earth objects increasing in public awareness if not in fact, a moon base would be a wise move.

:: Joel 2:38 PM [+] ::
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U.S. Mulls Military's Domestic Role
The U.S. should not sacrifice freedom, civil liberties and democratic republican government in order to fight terrorism. We must not react the way a totalitarian state would react, we must be true to our heritage and react as a democracy. America is hated because of the vitality produced by a free people. Our economic and cultural wealth is a result of freedom and if we sacrifice that, we harm ourselves. We have been attacked by religious extremists who don't value freedom, who hold to an oppressive and militaristic ideology of jihad, and we gain nothing if we become equally oppressive and militaristic. We fought fascism in World War II and communism during the Cold War and still retained our freedom and all that is best in America. I can only hope that we will do the same in this war on terrorism.

:: Joel 12:40 PM [+] ::
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