| The reason I say it is unavoidable is not laws of nature, it is the ease with which it can be done with current technology, and the advantages that our current technology brings to societies which do not reject it. Indeed we could, as you say, construct societies without that capacity — Amish, etc. already do so — but such a society is outcompeted by every society which embraces tech, and any society with tech at the level of the Stasi (i.e. both old and the wrong side of the Iron Curtain) can surveil whoever it wants whenever it wants. Now? Now it doesn’t matter if you decentralised all the infrastructure, the tech is too cheap to avoid total surveillance. Now, laser mics are school projects, and the hardware cost for pointing one at each and every window in London 24/7 is significantly lower than the annual cost of the Metropolitan Police Service in the same city. Now, your WiFi can be converted into a wall-penetrating radar, do pose detection, heart rate and breathing detection. Now, my wristwatch knows when I walk past the charging station to turn on its screen and remind me of its existence. I don’t even know how it knows when I’m walking past. Now, I have an IR camera that can see through some opaque-to-visible-light materials for no good reason and at pocket-money prices. “Centralised” has its problems, but getting rid of centralisation isn’t enough. |