[DanielBMarkham]

I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I apologize, but I believe that the networked computer is a bigger danger to mankind than nuclear weapons. We are completely destroying the innate quality that we've had as humans since we came out of the trees - anonymity and privacy.

I'm not saying technology is bad; I'm no Luddite. But we are entering places in our societal structures that we've never been before even in the strictest police states. Maybe it's grumpy old guy day again, but I do not feel that this is going to turn out well over the long run.

ADD: Of all the things I thought 20 years ago that I might be concerned about in the 2010s, "swarms of flying robots able to watch and record my every move" was not one of them. The future is not only stranger than you imagine; it is stranger than you can imagine. And that's just robotic drone surveillance. There's a dozen other networked technology devices that are much more worrying.

[noonespecial]

I'm going to have to disagree with the idea that anonymity and privacy are innate qualities that we've had as humans since we came out of the trees.

I think those are actually innate qualities of civilization not of the human species in general. If you think about it, the savage more or less lived his whole life in the "public eye" of his tribe/village. It was civilization that finally afforded him some privacy.

And that's what I find so troubling about the panopticon society. It somehow feels extremely uncivilized. To the point of savagery.

[yequalsx]

We've always been social creatures and when we came out of the trees did we really have anonymity and privacy? Village life has been the norm for most of your history and I believe that anonymity and privacy aren't the norm in village life. Am I wrong?

It seems to me that only since mass urbanization has there been anonymity and privacy and we begin to revert back to the historical mean. Although at a much grander scale. Is it the scale that is the danger? In the past one could leave the village for another location (in theory) and get away from stigma. Maybe now it is much harder.

Of course now there is much more information and many more instances of instant fame. Perhaps the noise will be anonymize us except to the powers that be.

[DanielBMarkham]

There's another thread that makes the same case: these things are not old.

As far as I know, we come from clan-like nomads, varying between a alpha-male-harem model with young males on the outskirts and a pair-bonding model with young males striking out on their own. That means that those in your clan have generally had a very close and intimate view of your activities -- and you of theirs. But also that 1) clans were by necessity small, and 2) you always had the ability to walk away. Village life gets a little more complicated, but there is a span of control issue at work: you simply can only be concerned with so many things at the same time. People who are not physically near you have privacy from your oversight. In fact, much of human social behavior is about the trading of information about other people, their thoughts and behaviors. The trust engendered forms alliances and creates a communal atmosphere.

The state of nature is that I can choose to talk away from any group of humans. Once I am several hundred meters away, whatever I am doing is anonymous and private. I can choose to share something with one or a few special friends. I can choose not to share something with somebody who has offended me. And so on.

But now it's possible to be concerned with millions of things at the same time. Computers can watch millions very closely. You can't walk away from a group of humans and have privacy and anonymity. The system will track you. Your call phone, for instance, has capabilities that make it more or less something akin to a cross between a surveillance device and a wildlife tracking tag. The natural limits that draconian states have over their people are melting away. That's completely new.

So yes, we've always been social creatures, but society has been defined by the physical and natural limits on cognition and communication. What we're turning into is not just a more social version of man. It's something completely different. As the other commenter pointed out, it's really more savage than social.

[yequalsx]

I understood your first comment to be in relation to governmental spying and neighbors (the whole world) spying. I agree the former is a serious problem and will likely have radical consequences but the latter I think won't be a problem. There is too much noise for you and I to keep on top of all the latest rumors and whatnot. I can retain anonymity and privacy from the average person but not from the government or corporations.

[mtgx]

When you see the video below, it's easy to imagine how likely that future will be if citizens don't care about what their Government is doing and simply let them pass all the bad laws, without any major outrage:

http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-f...

We've already seen how advanced western Governments think about stuff like this (in UK, but also in US) - "when it's easy and cheap enough to apply mass-surveillance of all forms of communications, why not do it?". So they'll do it even if it's unconstitutional, once the technology becomes cheap enough and people still don't react to these moves en mass.

There will be new technologies in the future that will simply be irresistible to the Governments that can implement them nation-wide. It's the population's job to be very vigilant about it and make sure they don't abuse them (or use them at all).

[pi18n]

Perhaps people will get clued in and protest. I'm hoping for a grassroots org to use handheld devices and, in aggregate, constantly monitor all police and lawmakers, posting their every move online.

[godbolev]

Sorry I'm a bit curious, but what are the dozen other networked technology devices that are much more worrying?

[Dn_Ab]

I must strongly disagree with you. It sounds like you have already given up.

On this forum someone posted a way to visualize factorizations of numbers in Haskell. Quickly someone put up a javascript version. Soon I expect someone will turn it to a webapp that makes it possible for anyone to use and if lucky may go 'viral'. The power of networks is in that kind of recursive mashup. This is a toy now but hopefully is a sign of things to come. Consider that in a way, google and stackoverflow are caches for experience. Memoizing experience to increase efficiency. In a very real sense the ease of networks and communication results in a non trivial increase in the intelligence of the society.

We hope that there will be a whole group of researchers willing to take the different parts of this process [(e.g. model organisms, high throughput omics technologies, drug development and repurposing, cellular and stem cell research)] and produce enough data so that it will become a whole new line of research. Like the small amounts of giving inherent in crowdfunding, we think many experts, each contributing a small amount of research, can accomplish much in aggregate. Crowdsourced research may enable new advancements that were not possible before.

http://www.genomesunzipped.org/2012/07/guest-post-jimmy-lin-...

Also worth pointing out is that while the specific instance of drones was not foremost in the list of dystopian worries, a surveillance society has existed as a worry since at least the 1940's. But despite the worries of Orwell and Huxley society is not near as bad as they expected. Indeed on average things are better for most people. From the average poor European to the average African.

It is easier to focus on the bad aspects of a thing and worry on the worst possible outcome. Indeed that is the nature of humanity for that Type of error is least costly from an evolutionary perspective. But networks are a tool. A tool which gives more than it takes, A good thing.

Information is power. Anything that increases the fluidity of its flow and its abundance is on the side of freedom. While it is true that everyone will be watched. It is also true that everyone will be watched, it will be ever harder for political leaders to deceive. The answer is not to stifle information flow but to make tools that make it possible to be hidden in plain site. Push decentralization, Encryption, clothing, tattoos, camera detection, IR accessories or private camera detecting-IR emitting drones. Action is the answer not worrying and lamenting. A Good thing can only be illegal if the governed quietly succumb to the inevitability of its occurrence.