Prepare to be tracked.. for history.

It's not a conspiracy. It's merely the natural evolution of technology in a digital society. As we advance into the future, society looks for more effective ways or recording our own advancement.

Imagine when ATS was nothing more than a few people gathering behind a hut, late at night, in a small jungle village that just acquired the means to document their history by discovering how to make paper, or carve symbols which represent important events into trees or wooden... logs.

Historical events are documented. This is basically a given. There haven been many, evolving ways, in which the history of a society has been shared and passed down through the ages. If we take them into account and compare them to what we are seeing come to fruition today, the ultimate goal of these systems will serve historians of the future. The traditional ways of documenting events have been:

1) Personal account/memory
... this is before spoken language. It is virtually impossible to accurately convey an event that was witnessed by one, to another. At most, a physical mimicry of the event happening is used to share the concept, but not details. This information is virtually impossible to backup, beyond backing up the concept in the mind of another, for him/her to share with others. The "copy" of the event that is created is vastly different than the original account.

2) Verbal Systems
... Verbal systems allowed tribal history to be spread and shared to the next generation, usually by stories of myth and legend. These myths and legends most likely came about due to the common phenomenon of information being slightly altered from one person to the next, until it becomes something hardly related to the original story. Backing up this type of history is often impossible,


3) Writing systems
... This type of system is more accurate than verbal systems. Paper, stone, and other media for writing words and symbols can last the span of thousands of years. Still, it is open to the same type of interpretation which causes verbal history to be skewed from one to the next. In the verbal and writing system, there is an original message, but many times even the written message is skewed by interpretation. It is still more effective than a verbal system for passing down knowledge and history to the next generations. This information, though vast and more accurate than the other 2 systems, does not easily facilitate the efficient searching and zeroing upon required information.

3a) For written history, different forms of technology were created to facilitate the passing on of knowledge and history. A few of these technologies include Books, libraries, and organizational systems such as the Dewey decimal system. This helped make finding the book you wanted easier in the book repository. The invention of Indexes helped to find the specific topic within the book. A visual scan or reading of the page is still necessary, and the entire process is a multi-step solution which could be made much faster.

4) Electronic systems
... this type of system is relatively new compared to the others. This method of passing on knowledge and history can take on many forms. It may include the previous 3 methods in their simplicity, and the data that is represented. Information degradation is not impossible, but also comparatively rare compared to the others. The creation of video technology has allowed for history to be captured in a real time objective standpoint.

4a) The most important technology regarding the electric documenting of events is the database. A relational database can be searched for specific words, topics, video, media etc.. at a whim. They allow for access to tons of information at the press of a button.

4b) To facilitate a more accurate depiction of history, you will be tracked, scanned, logged, recorded, and monitored,

No longer will historians have to wonder about history.

reply to post by Illuminatus I
What an excellent post, I'm surprised it's been overlooked. Very thoughtful stuff and well-presented.

The main issue I take is that history isn't objective, it isn't neutral. Truth is a construct applied to events that appeals to our perspective. The events themselves are created in the crucible of chaos theory whereby the identification of precursors can go back generations.

A useful example is possibly Al Queda. They are a modern outcome of decisions made during the Cold War and go back to 19th Century Afghanistan

The recording of history is determined and influenced by those recording it. Even the extent of what and how much is based on a subjective decision. Again, who controls the information?

No longer will historians have to wonder about history.

They will. They'll need to wonder as long as they have to interpret events. As long as information is controlled (and it must be), historians will have to interpret what they have access to. Also, I guess the limitations to interpretation will still be defined by the ability to process the information. Vast databases could result in too much data Kind of like the internet, some info is off limits and any search is only as good as the search criteria.

Have you read any Asimov? He has a concept computer called Multivac. It digests and processes every bit of information across galaxies and is under no political control. It makes decisions in mankind's best interests. War is unheard of, crime is almost a myth. People can ask it any question and it will answer. I love the idea of Multivac (better than politicians). If you haven't read any Asimov...this short story should be read by everyone before they die...two engineers ask how to keep the universe from running out of energy...

Read before dying! Isaac Asimov-The Last Question

Have you read any Asimov? He has a concept computer called Multivac. It digests and processes every bit of information across galaxies and is under no political control. It makes decisions in mankind's best interests. War is unheard of, crime is almost a myth. People can ask it any question and it will answer. I love the idea of Multivac (better than politicians). If you haven't read any Asimov...this short story should be read by everyone before they die...two engineers ask how to keep the universe from running out of energy...

Read before dying! Isaac Asimov-The Last Question

I'll have a look at that, thanks. It almost sounds like a google-bot.. haha.

I'd appreciate any more input...



[edit on 26-5-2009 by Illuminatus I]

This part confuses me:

Originally posted by Illuminatus I
4b) To facilitate a more accurate depiction of history, you will be tracked, scanned, logged, recorded, and monitored,

Do you mean by some type of a chip or something? Or am I completely missing what you said?

Other than that, very good job. I had never thought about the evolution of recorded history, so to speak.

Originally posted by riddle6
This part confuses me:

Originally posted by Illuminatus I
4b) To facilitate a more accurate depiction of history, you will be tracked, scanned, logged, recorded, and monitored,

Do you mean by some type of a chip or something? Or am I completely missing what you said?

Other than that, very good job. I had never thought about the evolution of recorded history, so to speak.

Not necessarily, but I wouldn't rule out "chips" that are eventually attached to everything (at least man-made) and monitored by some planet-wide network which is capable of monitoring the entire world in real time. It would be like a virtual copy of the world, so to speak. This certainly wouldn't be viable until we gained a one-world model.

The chip you are mentioning falls under the electronic system of record keeping, which is only the failed realization of something greater. The chip being imagined now are the first attempted flying machines - things that just won't work due to flawed core ideas.

It's not as much of a case of government tracking individuals, or individuals tracking individuals as it is society and civilization tracking (recording) itself. Tracking for these purposes is just just a very accurate record of events, after all.

It's likely that we'll get to the point where we have, after electronic systems have run their course:

5) Neural systems

... this type of system records imprints directly from the human mind onto crystalline matrix data repositories. Degradation of this information is virtually impossible due to the conditions in which the data is stored and growth-controlled conditions. Neural systems came about first as life-recorders that people used to record their own life for personal purposes (like the movie "Final Cut" but more www.imdb.com...). They eventually became so common, that having a neural implant was as common as having Internet access in the mid 21st century and so mapping and communicative services available for neural implants flourished. People could now share their life experiences with 100% accuracy of perception though neural framework relay systems. Stories were no longer passed on by word of mouth, text, or pictures, but through direct memory inspection. All important global events were captured with 100% accuracy from the perspective of every member present who had a neural implant - which includes all government employees.

5b) Neural systems helped to greatly improve the efficiency of the criminal justice system, as data recorded to crystalline matrix repositories were physically incapable of being modified or recoded once an original imprint was formed within the crystalline structure.

So, you see the concept of a "chip" is just the rudimentary precursor to an unknown, suspected invasive (from our standpoint) phenomenon which we haven't been able to fully realize.

reply to post by Illuminatus I


Okay, makes sense.

The more I thought about it (after I posted), the more that I thought that it might be something like what you were talking about.