What may be the world's first cybernetic hate crime unfolds in French McDonald's

This is the most frightening thing about the future in my personal opinion.

The types of fear and hate that will exist between the "normal humans" and the "cybernetic or genetically modified". It will grow worse and worse as time progresses and the technology develops and becomes ubiquitous.

Science fiction authors have delved into these potentials extensively, and there are many lessons about ethics and morality that can be ascertained by examining them in a speculative context.

It is clear there is no way to prevent the advent and development of technology, if it can be created it most likely will. But at the same time, technology has to be held in check and there must be simple and effective methods developed to neutralize any threats they may pose to "normal human" society.

If the "normals" and the "augmented" cannot learn to coexist, if they cannot find symbiosis, than there will be an endless civil war among our species. There will be marauding and highly questionable "deaths" popping up all over the place. Forced "deconstruction" of a cyborg (torture and horrific and vile). Or there will be forced "augmentation" of normal humans against their will...which is the most nightmarish and horrific scenario.

It looks like a 90%+ chance we will devolve into endless strife, squalor, and corruption.

The only possible way we can make it forward is if people actually start giving a crap about the future, and start realizing we need to find peaceful resolutions and co-exist with the entities we live with here on Earth, no matter what they are.

You cannot just eradicate life forms like that, it's genocidal almost. We need to take great measures to seek liberty and justice for all beings, not just ourselves. We are meant to be caretakers.

Look I have full faith the human race is capable of staying on top no matter what comes our way.
But people need to learn about hatred and find ways of questioning it and debunking it for themselves in their own minds. People need to realize that peaceful relations with all beings is the most important goal we can have. Of course we must be capable of self-defense, no doubt.

I am going to choose to forge a bright and positive future without conflict.
I just hope everyone else finds it in themselves that this is the right path, as many have before.
Thankfully with this telecommunications network we are becoming quite literate and intelligent overall we just need to be nudged in the right direction (as the establishment now nudges us into the wrong direction).

Originally posted by CrimsonMoon
reply to post by Gauss

 

The French arn't like Americans they stand up for themselves

That made me LOL

reply to post by XeroOne


What law? There's cameras everywhere and only thing that might apply is secretly filming. Having the device in the smack middle of his head kinda eliminates that.

reply to post by sleepdealer


You ever walk in the public? There's tons of cameras out there. You go to every business giving concent to film? That makes no sense. Also that "idea of privacy" doesn't really apply to public.

reply to post by sleepdealer


Yep. No right to privacy in public and freedom of speech.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
reply to post by XeroOne

 

What law? There's cameras everywhere and only thing that might apply is secretly filming. Having the device in the smack middle of his head kinda eliminates that.

Did you read my earlier post? He kind of incriminated himself by posting his intention on one of his blogs, in black and white.

Muzzleflash see this...

its from a game but its not far from reality...
For those that cant see the clip, it shows how humanity will handle this technology.
A war between augmented and normal people and how the corporations will use this to make huge profits.
And develop some kind of a drug that you must take forever so the body wont reject the augmented parts.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by Gauss

 

Damn! If McDonalds employees respond this violently, imagine how cops are going to respond! Get pulled over while wearing one of those things, and you are in for some real trouble!

I don't see how a boycott of McDonalds makes any sense though? The 3 perpetrators ought to be fired and have assault charges pressed, but the corporation really isn't at fault is it?

The same hate that lead to the attack will lead to people blaming McDonald's even though they had zero to do with it.

No, McDonald's is not responsible except in the eyes of irrational people. It's likely the nutty McDonald's haters who caused these employees to act so badly to begin with. I'd be paranoid too if I worked in a business that was a target of crazy nut jobs.

MacDonalds corporate have decided that there was no wrong doing by its restauraunt, or restauraunt staff, and have stated that there was no physical altercation, and that he was simply asked to leave.

source

reply to post by Gauss


alright i did some reading but cant find out exactly what

this does for the man..

is it attached directly to his eye?

does it feed video into his pupil?

The majority of the posts in this thread have blown me away with their lack of education, denial, ignorance and outright lack of critical thinking/logic. Aside from a handful of people who either understand the implications of this technology or appreciate that there is more to this story than the article at face value would have you believe.
Here's my observations;
* The story in the article is one sided, we only hear Steve's Mann's version of the events that took place. The "perpetrators" versions of the events are conveniently missing from the article.
*Very few are considering or educating themselves on the privacy laws of the country (France) in which the incident took place and simply applying US laws as if they are global laws, which they are not.
en.wikipedia.org...

The basic principles of data protection in the EU are:
- For all data collected there should be a stated purpose
- Information collected by an individual cannot be disclosed to other organizations of individuals unless authorized by law or by consent of the individual
- Records kept on an individual should be accurate and up to date
- There should be mechanisms for individuals to review data about them, to ensure accuracy. This may include periodic reporting
- Data should be deleted when it is no longer needed for the stated purpose
- Transmission of personal information to locations where "equivalent" personal data protection cannot be assured is prohibited
- Some data is too sensitive to be collected, unless there are extreme circumstances (e.g., sexual orientation, religion)

*Most posters are using stereotypes, generalizations and flat out ignorance to promote their own personal opinion of a place or people that they have never been to and really know anything about.
*Steve Mann's explanation of the technology in reference to this event is taken at face value without questioning the more in depth explanation of the technology provided on his own websites.
www.eecg.toronto.edu...
genesis.eecg.toronto.edu...
www.wearcomp.org...
*No one is concerned with his research on "Sousveillance" or "Equiveillance"

Sousveillance refers to the recording of an activity by a participant in the activity typically by way of small wearable or portable personal technologies. Sousveillance has also been described as "inverse surveillance", based on the word surveillance and substituting the prefix sous, "from below". While surveillance and sousveillance both generally refer to visual monitoring, the terms also denote other forms of monitoring such as audio surveillance or sousveillance. In the audio sense (e.g. recording of phone conversations) sousveillance is referred to as "one party consent". Inverse surveillance is a subset of sousveillance with a particular emphasis on the "watchful vigilance from underneath" and a form of surveillance inquiry or legal protection involving the recording, monitoring, study, or analysis of surveillance systems, proponents of surveillance, and possibly also recordings of authority figures and their actions. Inverse surveillance is typically an activity undertaken by those who are generally the subject of surveillance, and may thus be thought of as a form of ethnography or ethnomethodology study (i.e. an analysis of the surveilled from the perspective of a participant in a society under surveillance). Sousveillance typically involves community-based recording from first person perspectives, without necessarily involving any specific political agenda, whereas inverse-surveillance is a form of sousveillance that is typically directed at, or used to collect data to analyze or study, surveillance or its proponents (e.g., the actions of police or protestors at a protest rally).

en.wikipedia.org...

Equiveillance is a state of equilibrium, or a desire to attain a state of equilibrium, between surveillance and sousveillance. It is sometimes confused with transparency. This balance (equilibrium) allows the individual to construct their own case from evidence they gather themselves, rather than merely having access to surveillance data that could possibly incriminate them. Sousveillance, in addition to transparency, can be used to preserve the contextual integrity of surveillance data. For example, a lifelong capture of personal experience could provide "best evidence" over external surveillance data, to prevent the surveillance-only data from being taken out of context.

en.wikipedia.org...
*Aside from 1or 2 individuals, no one has even thought to ask if Mann has an agenda to promote for his own personal gain. Like provoking the incident for funds or promote his products!

Our own eyes do this same exact thing but with wetware instead of hardware. This is why machines will not care about killing a large portion of humans when they finally gain active awareness. Our eyes and brain serve the same purpose.

reply to post by CrimsonMoon


So, using that logic, if YOU ever walk into any business, church, school, store, etc., with a cell phone that has a camera, whether recording or not.....they have the right to assault YOUR ass, correct? How about your child? Fair game?

reply to post by Ericthenewbie

Thanks for sharing. I had read elsewhere when observing the story(will see if I can locate it) a comment similar to yours describing only his side of the story, but didn't go into depth about it. Makes more sense now.

reply to post by defiler


What a clip that was!

This is precisely how I envision our future should we go the trans-humanist direction. We do not need to be hard wired at ALL times. In fact I pretty much 'unplugged' all day today and it was great!

reply to post by Ericthenewbie


My first instinct was to be suspicious of this 'attack' from the get-go. Look.... We are all now discussing Steve Mann and his integrated cyborg unit.

The other side of this story is coming out, and it sounds like this might be an attempt for 15 minutes fame, to file a frivolous lawsuit, or to get his product attention:

McDonald's claims employees didn't assault 'cyborg'
In response to a storm of controversy surrounding its treatment of Human Cyborg Steve Mann, McDonald's has issued a statement, claiming that it has investigated the incident and determined that it "did not involve a physical altercation" when the University of Toronto Professor and father of wearable computing was ejected from one of its Paris restaurants.

We'll have to wait and see how this plays out I guess.

ATM for all we know, someone might have accidentally bumped him, his glasses fell, broke, and now he's trying to get McDonalds to settle with him for the cost of his expensive toy.

reply to post by defcon5


Well that would actually be how McD would find it.
Even if they know they were in the wrong they would try to issue a press release saying they did nothing wrong.

Companies do it all the time, issue a press release that is 100% bull in an attempt to quite the incident down.
As long as the public isn't looking at them it allows them to settle for less.
If that doesn't work they switch to the public apology.
Companies alwasye deny wrong doing at first though, it works to keep the settlement down sometimes.

The worst that can happen is they get called liars and people already don't like them so a little extra dislike is worth the risk.

Just my .02 on press releases at least.

Originally posted by Blackjack Baby
reply to post by CrimsonMoon

 

So, using that logic, if YOU ever walk into any business, church, school, store, etc., with a cell phone that has a camera, whether recording or not.....they have the right to assault YOUR ass, correct? How about your child? Fair game?

You made that assumption based on what, exactly? We're not talking about someone who was assaulted for carrying a cell phone here, although admittedly I have used that as a very loose analogy myself.

Well that would actually be how McD would find it.
Even if they know they were in the wrong they would try to issue a press release saying they did nothing wrong.

Companies do it all the time, issue a press release that is 100% bull in an attempt to quite the incident down.
As long as the public isn't looking at them it allows them to settle for less.
If that doesn't work they switch to the public apology.
Companies alwasye deny wrong doing at first though, it works to keep the settlement down sometimes.

Unfortunately we don't know who is in the wrong here, given there are several European privacy and computer misuse laws that may have been broken, and Mann has the means to disclose his side of the story whereas the McDonalds employees don't. Any technology graduate should, at the very least, know this, and have some understanding where the line is drawn legally.

If McDonalds' lawyers can prove Mann's intent was surveillance-related, which they probably will, there won't be a settlement unless Mann had the legal authorisation or consent of the employees he was filming/photographing. Mann's lucky if he doesn't get prosecuted for this.

That's roughly where he stands.

Eeh... that has nothing to do with surveillance. By that standard any photographer would too.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Eeh... that has nothing to do with surveillance. By that standard any photographer would too.

The case here does. Read the thread to see why.

reply to post by Ericthenewbie


I was thinking the same thing.

The article wants to suggest the "attackers" were merely just ignorant Science-hating apes that unreasonably assaulted the man out of some irrational fear for technology. At least, that's what I picked up from the article.

To me, it seems like there is a far deeper element to the story, in that the people were fully aware they were effectively under surveillance, and perhaps they have much larger issues with surveillance as a whole, and they found this particularly disturbing. I would. Google Glasses where everyone captures everything at all times? No thank you.

Not an unexpected reaction to be perfectly honest.

I am also not buying the claim that it "never records unless damaged". That is bogus. It is always recording, he simply claims it never "saves the data" unless it's damaged. Bold claim. He says he wears it everywhere, which means he also brings it into public restrooms.

Boycott McDonald's for the slop they peddle, though.