Is the sacrifice worth it?

I miss writing about technology, privacy and security.

During WWII people gave up so much (silk and such) for the war effort in order to fight a semi-tangible enemy (at least one that had a specific geo-political border). I guess it’s only fair to give up something intangible for something intangible (Terror, Drugs…).

Yet how do you know when the war is over? When do the rations stop?

Everyone Hop On The Bailout Train!

Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

…

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the statement. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

Higher Education: Only For Those High Up on the Social Foodchain

The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.

Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007 while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education.

“When we come out of the recession,” Mr. Callan added, “we’re really going to be in jeopardy, because the educational gap between our work force and the rest of the world will make it very hard to be competitive. Already, we’re one of the few countries where 25- to 34-year-olds are less educated than older workers.”

I posted this link in my Facebook, but I figured it should be addressed here as well. So I’m glad I’m getting my degree now, considering that I went to this college based solely on financial aid. I’m barely affording it as is.

The future of Gattaca is sadly, not too far off.

But then again, 17 out of 23 people in my cyberpolitics class are on the way to become millionaires. One girl in my group was determined to make 10 million. I’m sure someone else raised their hand as well. I guess they don’t have much to worry about.

What the people forced into virtual colleges because commuting to college has gotten impossible due to high gas prices? Virtual education is inferior. It’s not the same as a campus classroom, with established professors.

So higher education is on the way to once more being only for the affluent?

I wonder how many more girls will dance their way to afford tuition?

Streams of Contention

Class observations 9.18.08

1.-Anything that the producer which brought us technology (technology is a good thing that we like), thus, anything else that they do must be good as well. Even surveillance.

2.-Students ask someone to justify why they want privacy – rather than ask themselves, or others, why companies have the right to see your private information?

It is illegal to read mail, why is alright for other information to be public?

3.-The problem is who the information is sold to. Between you and gmail is okay – but you have no idea who else knows–who Google is sharing with. Who they are giving your information to. Foreign companies?

How do companies interpret your data? How are you marketed to other companies or government?

They can manipulate data – they can change what you’ve said – re-writing history.

They can blackmail and condemn you. They can fabricate evidence. “Here! You said this then!!”

While we are not there yet, it is not a far cry. It is like someone forging your signature on a terrorist letter.

4.-Why can’t the internet be a private zone? Does it all have to be public? Things can change. What are the boundaries of privacy? Are there any? Should there be any?

It is a false choice in being able to avoid digital enclosure. You have to be privatized and owned before you can participate. You are forced to “have access,” and thus be controlled and manipulated. You get publicly ostracized by people. This is what is known as self-policing. We are personally corralling ourselves into private enclosures that we have no rights, no privacy and very little power or information in. We are doing the job for the companies. We are marketing ourselves.

Digital enclosure means privatization. You cannot opt out. The farmers did not have a choice in the industrial era, just like we do now. The difference is the lack of physical temporal space that is making us slower to realize the power that we are giving out.

“To escape the cage, you must first be able to see the bars” (adapted from Ishmael, a novel by Daniel Quinn).

On an unrelated note; I wonder if the people who make the arguement “I have nothing to hide, I’m not a freak, look at everything I am doing”–I wonder if they have some true weird exhibitionist fetish. The rest of us with normal kinks and fetishes want them to be private, and they are supposedly the freaky perverted ones, but what if the “I’m open to all! Look at me!..I mean..I’m innocent and sweet and have nothing to hide”–what if they are the super perverted ones? The ones that get off on people, lots of anonymous, and (maybe with a daddy complex) corporations, government and other authority figures looking over them and monitoring them…watching and knowing everything about them?