This StormCloudsGathering video details the biometric data collection mandates contained within the recent immigration bill, “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act”. The video suggests that such biometric tools (meant for use in immigration) are and will continue to be used to create massive databases, not only of immigrants and visitors, but of all Americans — and that it — the database — is currently quite far along in its development.

While some fear ID tags and mandatory microchips, perhaps more scary is the notion that we are passively being corralled into a situation in which all of our biometric data is shared and stored opaquely by the government and various agencies within it. What could the data be used for? Most terrifying is as a condition of employment for American citizens. But there are surely worse scenarios that I cannot yet imagine. For instance (off the top of my head), what if mistakes in your Tax return flagged you as suspicious and automatically barred you from entry into certain government institutions or warned potential employers of your ‘untrustworthiness’? There are too many dreadful scenarios, too much unaccountability.

What technologies are being used currently? What may be being collected about you as we speak?

• Gait Recognition, based on the bounce in your step — decipherable from far away
• Facial Recognition, aided by your sharing of images of yourself from various angles on social media sites like Facebook
• Iris Scanning, recently thrust upon Occupy protesters lest they pay higher bail for release from prison
• Voice Recognition, how many microphones are there, right?
• Fingerprints, of course
• Whatever is next: DNA-collection, maybe?

INSPIRATION

INSPIRED THOUGHTS & VISIONS

an old family property,
a 3D printer
lots of scrap wood and metal
a new shelter, semi-steampunk in appearance
permanently planting
a permaculture planting scheme: farm
a farm with multiple hammocks to boot
and solid bookshelves stocked with books
art and music abound
nature and technology melding together
people and animals
laid back and yet productive
these visions i have had

IMAGES

A PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS?

I now plan to read his book, The Science Delusion, as well. It is an excellent talk and TED is doing itself a huge disservice in removing it from their front page. They have relegated it to a small back corner of their site and labelled it “open for discussion”. I personally feel disgusted at their behavior, especially considering the meritorious elucidation of the problems with science as it is currently practiced in our world today.

A big thank you to Rupert for his dedication to real science and real skepticism. And unless they reinstate it in a prominent place in an expedient fashion, a big shame on TED for their hypocrisy in claiming that they want to engage — with us, with Sheldrake, and with the world on the very important topic of what we actually know and what we think we know — as they actively try to dis-engage from it all.

Other talks that have been censored by TED:
Nick Hanauer: Rich People Don’t Create Jobs
Graham Hancock: The War on Consciousness [another must-watch]

Another view into the minds of TED organizers:
JRE #330 (The Joe Rogan Experience): Eddie Huang TED Conference Exposed

The gentleman in this here TED Talk leads with the astonishing and shocking statistic of the global dearth of adequate shelter: Over 1 Billion of us live in ramshackle, unsafe, and inadequate housing. Shelter is a fundamental need and construction is currently a costly, dirty, inefficient, and corruption-prone enterprise. Enter the new age of 3D-printed housing. Cheap, sturdy, adaptable, and fast!

ríe chinito, se ríe y yo lloro porque el chino ríe sin mí
ríe en la noche y achina los ojos morochos más lindos que vi
sopla las cañas, sube la montaña
mañana quizás bajará
se hace de día, el sol lo encandila
los vientos descanzan, y el chino se amansa (y sé)
ríe chinito, se ríe y yo lloro porque el chino ríe sin mí
ríe en la noche y achina los ojos morochos más lindos que vi
sopla las cañas, sube la montaña
mañana quizás bajará
mira la luna, mi niña y se acuna
que es larga la noche y es claro el camino
mi despedacito de río
¿hasta dónde bajarás?
mi despedacito de río
ríe chinito, se ríe y yo lloro porque el chino ríe sin mí
ríe en la noche y achina los ojos morochos más lindos que vi
sopla las cañas, sube la montaña
mañana quizás bajará
mira la luna, mi niña y se acuna
que es larga la noche y es claro el camino
mi despedacito de río
¿hasta dónde bajarás?
mi despedacito de río
mi despedacito de río
¿hasta dónde bajarás?
mi despedacito de río

( achinar los ojos = to squint one’s eyes )
( encandilar = dazzle )
( amansarse = to calm down )
( acunarse = to rock oneself )

The video below, from 1981, shows newspapers embracing the early internet to share text-only papers with tech-savvy (at the time) readers on their home computers.

I love how the dial-up modem requires that the rotary phone handset be placed on top of it before connecting — and just the fact that the computer owner is introduced with “owns home computer”!

My first experience with the internet was at least 10 years after this, around 1992, on a Mac II (with AOL 2.0), which cost $5,500 in 1987 when it first came out! Here is a picture of one:

AND HERE’S WHAT COMPUTERS AND THE INTERNET WERE LIKE IN 1981…

We sure have come a long ways in 30 years! I wonder what it will be like in another 32 years — 2045? They say the Singularity is supposed to hit us by then, so maybe we’ll store all our data in our DNA and share images telepathically and fly around with antigravity nanobots! I’ll bet few of us could have predicted back in the day that we’d all carry around these communicators which are constantly connected to the internet and act as video/audio/telegraph phones with 1 million personal secretary apps that track our every movement and remind us of what we need to do all the time! Yeah? I thought not!

According to my Kopimist news source, MegaBox is going to be a “massive, socially-integrated creative content distribution site”, one which will cut out the middlemen and remove some of the hassle for artists trying to get their content out to their target audience, us, the content consumers. And do we not tire of exorbitant CD prices?

Oh, wait. When is the last time I even bought a CD? Hmmm… I’ll have to ponder that one. While I do that, go ahead and check out this video!

It has been said that MegaBox will cater to unsigned artists and allow anyone to sell their creations while allowing the artist to retain 90% of the earnings. And even if consumers choose not to contribute to a donation-based download, it seems MegaBox will still pay them, out of its own pockets, so to speak, under a program called “MegaKey”. Let’s hope this is the case when it is released!

From what I’ve read and heard, I believe this would make for a splendid cornerstone in the marriage of media/music-sharing and media/music-storage.

I look forward very much to trying it out.

Efforts to fight piracy and limit computer functionality converge on malware/spyware being pre-installed on every machine that ships. As an example, Intel has teamed up with video streaming services in the design of their new Sandy Bridge chips, which will supposedly allow for only DRM content to be streamed in HD. (Not that you have to utilize DRM-ladden content; you can find and play things in HD on your own still, but it’s the beginning of a larger trend — i.e. cars that can be remotely shut down, iPhones whose cameras turn off at the request of the authorities, etc.)

This trend is most disturbing in particular in regimes where the populace is not media-literate enough to get around these restrictions, unlike in wealthy, western countries where we can assume, as always, someone will find a way to hack into it (or out of it). [Maybe these people: ccc.de?]

Doctorow refers to all of our iThings and other increasingly restricted forms of hardware as Appliances, but what they are, he goes on to elucidate, are general purpose computers that ship with malware inside. With SOPA and all this copyright mess what we are seeing is just the first battle of the war on general purpose computing.