Does Modern Technology Enslave Us?

The latest Samsung wide-screen TV has a function which records voices: an in-built microphone set to randomly start recording in people's homes. Google has recently been fined for breaching privacy laws. Facebook owners have been seen meeting up with heads of states and politicians.

I find it worrying that the items we have in our homes are carrying information, photographs and data to the outside world. Many are not aware that this is happening, let alone able to disable such intrusive functions on their gadgets. The issue of privacy is surely becoming more prevalent in society now that we are surrounded by items that can soak up personal information (and share that information to third parties) on a regular basis.

It is happening in every domain. The items we buy and use out of freedom, luxury and entertainment are also valuable commodities to businesses and data collection companies, who want to understand us, evaluate us, and categorise us. Let alone the capabilities of government surveillance, as highlighted by Edward Snowden.

Several weeks ago, my laptop, which was situated on the floor of my lounge, started pinging off the camera app. Two photographs I believe were taken. I have no means of understanding how the laptop was able to independently take photographs. It did, however, remind me of the account of a school boy in the UK, who found that his school laptops were set to record photographs of students who borrowed the item for school projects.

It is worrying that items we buy can be against our wishes.

The Twitter app, upon download, asks permission to access phone call data, photographs and SMS messages. Facebook has similar requests.

With this issue comes great concern. If these companies are legally able to take and manipulate customer information, then there should no longer be confusion on the issue. These technology giants should be transparent and ensure people know how, why and when their information is being used. Openness and education are key. Withholding the truth or deliberately being vague on this issue will likely result in misunderstanding and even paranoia.

Echoes of the novel 1984 will haunt any discussion on a topic like this. Are our modern day gadgets being used against us? Have we entered a phase in society where complete privacy is almost an impossibility to achieve?

a reply to: AlmostRosey

It is for some of the very items you mentioned that I removed the Facebook app (along with a few others) from my phone and refuse to buy a "smart" TV. The FB app was constantly secretly restarting even after manually forcing it to stop and I uninstalled other apps that were doing the same. It's not that I do anything illegal or exciting but darn it my privacy is just that- mine.

What about Barbie doll which listens and talks back.. thats is just sooo wrong

"Hello Barbie" uses speech recognition and connects to Wi-Fi. When someone presses a button on her belt buckle, Barbie will record what you say and send it it up to the cloud. It's saved, so Barbie keeps learning more and more about you, in order to inform her responses. "Kids using 'Hello Barbie' aren't only talking to a doll, they are talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial," said Susan Linn, the director of Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. Overtime, "Hello Barbie" will learn a child's likes and dislikes so that she can incorporate them into conversation.

Link

We need to remember that as a customers all the data we provide to these companies thru devices and customer surveys etc are property of the company, they can do whatever they want with the information given unless there is that little box marked which would deny that right from them.. and that information is worth of money what they receive and they can sell that information to third party.

NO, of course not...now I'll just finish four or five more posts before heading to FB and then using my automatic appliances to make dinner while I type some more on my computer... Um. What were you saying? I'm too hyper to concentrate now, must KEEP CLICKING LINKS!!!

My server is my Master...



- AB

a reply to: AlmostRosey

It's already enslaving us! You can't walk down the street without seeing people talking on their cell phones as they pass by in their cars. Young people can't keep their cell phones in their pockets. They walk and talk with their head down while texting! Video games have caused too many kids to become couch potatoes and obese. The old past time of heading down to the park to play a game of basketball, touch football, or baseball is very seldom seen now. Communication is no longer face to face. Instead, most of our communicating is by Facebook, texting and e-mailing. Even applying for a job in person is no longer the norm.

Technology has both a good and sinister side.

a reply to: WeRpeons

I was in the sauna the other week and this late-teen guy and his girlfriend were there with ALL of their handheld gadgets - iPhones and iPods. I asked if they were worried about heat or water damage as the girl constantly checked and re-checked the gadgets (and even made random phone calls to friends of hers), but the guy seemed unconcerned and said his rich dad can just replace it whenever he wants. The guy himself was completely narcissistic and seemed to demand random attention from strangers as if he thought he was a celebrity. Another side effect of constant social media-use like Skype, Instagram and Facebook. Narcissism, attention problems, obsessive compulsive issues, and a complete reliance on these devices to the point where young drivers today are texting WHILE driving and crashing into stuff LOL.

As for the technology/Big Brother question... I guess it's okay as long as everything is kept prudent and legal or whatever. Young people growing up do not have the same concerns for privacy as much. I find that growing up with this technology makes them more able to talk to anybody of any age - on that level it makes people more articulate and socially open and less concerned about privacy concerns. In the end it is usually the sexually-related things that are the most dearly private. We have to, as a society, all deal with the various 'age of consent' types of problems and pornographic secretive portions of life that are supposedly in conflict with a clean status quo persona we all seem to have to adhere to.

As for data collections for marketing purposes - what we buy, watch etc - that has almost always been a thing and is largely a side effect of capitalism and consumerism. Most people are okay with all of that. I make sure to leave my television on the new channel 'Love Nature' to let the cable companies know that some people like the good, rare TV channels such as that and keep it around. Other types of adware pop-ups and this sort of thing can easily be ignored.

Enslave us, you ain't kidding. Getting the rear sensors fixed on my car, for a laugh I took a Smart car as a courtesy car, and the piggin' thing had me tied up in knots. You put the key and turn for ignition, except nothing happens, so you look at the dash and you get a 'unlock' icon flashing...so, yeah, alright take the key out and press the unlock button, except the piggin' key won't come out and so you start wrestling with it, and by doing so the very soft pads on the key start doing their functions that you hit as you wrestled with it, and the the boot window opens. Then you need to get out and close the boot. When you get back in the dash has gone blank of messages and you think, maybe I can get the key out now? sure enough out pops the key. So I use the unlock function on the key, and carefully put the key back in turn it, and feck all happens..while the dash is telling me i need to unlock once again...Grrrr. Eventually, i execute a perfect ignition and the so called, 'car' starts while I have a nice, 'N' icon for neutral, so I slide the semi-automatic lever over to the left, and I get a, '1' icon instead of an, 'A' ooops! there is a button on the lever, that you can't see to change it to automatic, so while I am foutering with the gear lever, I accidentally hit the ignition key close by, and the fecking boot window opens again. The Smart car is the Stupidest car on the planet, and only designed for you to spend money on a proper Mercedes, should you survive. Mind you, the most embarrassing thing that occurred was only tentatively to do with technology, when I pulled into a Petrol/Gas station to put in some Petrol/Gas, I rolled up to the end pump as usual and got out only to find that the car was about ten feet forward of the pump, and this guy across from me was laughing his nuts off..I did take a few steps toward him pump in hand, then I thought I looked armed and dangerous, so I just gave up. That's what to do if you drive a Smart!

a reply to: AlmostRosey

I think it is utterly beyond question, that certain elements of the way our technology has evolved, represent a negative effect on our level of privacy. Whether that equates to enslavement, which is a very specific circumstance to find oneself in, is however in question.

The monitoring situation, technology being taken out of our control, and put in the hands of companies and governments is something which really does not need to be discussed too deeply, in order to find that there is something extremely nefarious underlying it all. The subject cannot be discussed without reference to the activities of Edward Snowden, since they occupy the same space in terms of how they can be categorised as a function of authoritarianism. These things are increasingly obviously, fact, rather than a part of some dystopian fiction.

The question is not whether they are going on, or whether they are damaging to the state of democracy, privacy, and essential freedoms, but what can we possibly do about it, without disconnecting ourselves entirely from electronic communiations systems. Now, rather obviously, that would be deeply impractical for many reasons. For a start, here we are communicating about these subjects using electronic communications formats to do so. Furthermore, it is vital that we continue to do so! Without discussions like those hosted here, the stories which come out in the news which relate to these issues, are forgotten by the majority, they pass out of the frame of reference as readily as curls of smoke from a freshly extinguished cigarette.

So we really are in a cleft stick in an awful lot of ways. Now, I personally am not connected to Facebook or Twitter, but just by owning a computer which has a built in camera, and using an iPad, which has one front and back, I am exposed to all manner of remote access. Interestingly enough, the computer through which I am communicating now, an HP G70, has an inbuilt camera which is probably easier to access remotely, than it is to access from the hardware itself! Sure, the thing works if I use it on Skype or something (again, exposure), but try to access it without using a communication program! You will realise upon the attempt, that the scanners and cameras section of the computer does not register the existence of that device!

The real issue is, that we ARE in difficult situation, because without the capacity to discuss these issues, they fall into the background...

I come here to discuss these things, because many people, a great majority of people refuse to even contemplate them. They have these mechanisms that they use to ignore these matters, without really engaging in them at all, despite being most at risk of having their data accessed for nefarious purpose by governments, companies, and criminal enterprises (the differences between which seem to grow smaller every day, as new information comes to light). Discussing these matters in social settings therefore, is not really an option, because people are not willing to engage.

My best friend, despite knowing my preference not to be attached to a social network, recently suggested that I join Facebook for the purpose of arranging my upcoming birthday celebrations, because all the people I was intending to invite locally, are on Facebook, and find it difficult to take notice of things which happen outside of it. The network is addictive, pervasive, comfortable, and hence people become uncomfortable with forms of communication which fall outside of it! They find it harder to retain data which comes in via email and text messages, than they do Facebook communications, probably because walls and status updates mean that they do not necessarily have to actively remember as much personal data about friends and family, events and invitations, as they would without these systems.

However, this pervasive and addictive element are all part and parcel of dressing these systems up as anything else than the back door intelligence gathering tools that they really are. I fail to believe that the creators of these systems are intelligent enough to create them at all, but not intelligent enough to understand the implications of doing so, hence my being disinclined to interact with them myself.

I would however say, that we are not slaves to these systems. We are either victims of an organised exercise in industrial voyeurism, or partially outcast from society as far as the web goes, and of course that has ripples in wider society. I see these things as being very dangerous indeed, for the long term security of every one of us, not just here in the circles in which this membership move, but for every human being on the planet. There is no goodness which can come of any of this.

The power of the brain is being limited, and in such, your mind (it's integrated in yhe brain)

Always, humans have relied on the brain and it's memory power (which is amazing), as they move forward with time, all their experiences, ideas, philosophies, beliefs, contridictions.. anything given thought was stored in the brain.

Now , we are using less and less brain capacity and becomin regurgitated zombies who spew the same crap out of their mouth with no meaning or thought analysis.

This is how you dumb down upcoming generations, who will breed through this brainless species.

So yes, technology is making things easier, and more convenient to store all our data and information (which our brains are fully capable of).

ETA - cute avatar btw Rose

Decades ago in the 1990's, the spooks saw that mobile computer technology and the Internet was letting them get into places they could not otherwise access. Once computers had internet access, they could get access to the microphone and if they were lucky, a webcam. Next thing, laptops have webcams and microphones built in. Then that leads to class action lawsuits against school boards:

en.wikipedia.org...

Yet they continue pushing the idea of getting surveillance sensors into every device - the "Intenet of Things"; microphones and cameras into TV's and Kinect boxes, mobile phones. Even fridge freezers and cookers which had LCD screens and could display recipes through voice recognition. The ultimate goal is to have smart homes which have voice activated lighting and other environmental controls. Cloud computing allows for costs to be reduced by doing all the voice recognition remotely on state-of-the-art servers, and not have the home management system constantly upgraded. As a side-benefit it allows the government to track down fugitives by voice recognition and to keep up to date on family situations.

As technology has evolved alongside humans we have always become in some way dependant upon it.

From fire, to the wheel, to agriculture, to steam power, to combustion engines.

Look at electricity, when/if that next big solar flare takes out our power grids what is going to happen?

Cannibalism.

'Modern' tech like smart phones and laptops have now become another component of our daily existence. Can we survive without them? Can we survive without fire? What about the wheel? The answer of course is yes. We just use these things to make our lives more 'convenient'.

Like Jello Biafra said "give me convenience, or give me death".

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: AlmostRosey

the question is not whether they are going on, or whether they are damaging to the state of democracy, privacy, and essential freedoms, but what can we possibly do about it, without disconnecting ourselves entirely from electronic communiations systems. Now, rather obviously, that would be deeply impractical for many reasons. For a start, here we are communicating about these subjects using electronic communications formats to do so. Furthermore, it is vital that we continue to do so!

Enough already!
Should it be ever known that it is vital by all to continue to use electronic communications about real truths, would make Google cry in their cream, because they systematically apply a hierachy all of their own, which is not on the face of it, a system at all. The thing is Google may debar a low profile website for say, posting secondhand blogs for the content, while not debarring others who are in the higher profile, because they are who they are, the trick being that they hide under the idea that they cannot police everything, in other words they just pick on some entity, and allow others.
You could wade through this stuff in the meantime, there is no compulsion to believe it...but, but.

sugarrae.com...

a reply to: smurfy

Well, that is another rabbit hole all of its own, isn't it?

The thing is, whether you take these things individually, or collectively, and observe their overarching effect on the people who rely on them, you see an overwhelmingly worrying picture developing. The blatancy of it is interesting as well. I regard many of the most concerning services to be nothing more than the least well disguised combination PSYOP/SIGINT operation ever devised, so stark is the effect when viewed from outside to a degree.

originally posted by: Elementalist
The power of the brain is being limited, and in such, your mind (it's integrated in yhe brain).
Now , we are using less and less brain capacity and becomin regurgitated zombies who spew the same crap out of their mouth with no meaning or thought analysis.

This is how you dumb down upcoming generations, who will breed through this brainless species.

So yes, technology is making things easier, and more convenient to store all our data and information (which our brains are fully capable of).

ETA - cute avatar btw Rose

Interesting point. What I find particularly frightening is the idea that future generations are going to become easy targets to be moulded, controlled and easily-led. (If what you say is the case). Though on the flip side, there is a transparency to the internet; more and more information being revealed. That can be valuable - though only if people have the mind-set and brains to actually look into things and question things.

In general, the internet has great potential and opens so many doors for us all. Yet I can't help thinking we have all inadvertently celebrated and welcomed with open arms the mass-surveillance of "1984" - which is the most insidious thing of all.

It doesn't free us. I find myself likening the middle ages castles and quests, but even that's a fantasy there is no age of freedom unless its a new Morph.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: smurfy

I regard many of the most concerning services to be nothing more than the least well disguised combination PSYOP/SIGINT operation ever devised, so stark is the effect when viewed from outside to a degree.

So do I, and Google's for sure.

I think the OP's title says it quite succinctly. We are quickly nearing a time where you will not be able to function in society without said gadgetry. Not only do we need them to communicate and interact financially but soon we will need them to verify who we are. Biometrics is the tie that once bound will never be undone. It simply offers too much control over others to not be used and abused by those in power.

There is also a very troubling human aspect to this rise in technology that is fundamentally changing us. We have shorter attention spans, become less adept at using our own physical senses and by spending more time in the digital domain spend less time developing our physical bodies. Most will already admit to becoming bored quickly without online access or a game to play and feel naked going anywhere without our smartphones. I would also submit that it is crippling our creativity because that is a process that involves astute observation of the world around us and also quiet reflection to synthesize new ideas and ways to implement them.

I remember a time when schools would not allow us to bring calculators to school lest we failed to learn basic mathematic functions - I think every child should have to leave all their devices at the office upon arriving at school and pick them up when they go home.

These are conveniences and as such they make some aspect of our lives easier - too much easier IMO. We should still learn all the skills that these devices execute for us to save time so that we do not become completely dependent upon them. Even so, I fear society is quickly adopting all this technology in such a complete fashion that we will no longer even have the option to not use it. At that point know that we have become slaves willingly to a globalist elite who have stolen not only the world's wealth but our very futures as human beings.

It is said that all technology can serve good or evil purposes. I would invite the reader to decide for themselves which it being used for: our convenience or for their control?

Eta: There are periods where I'm not on ATS (or even on a computer) for weeks or months at a time. I willingly cut myself off from all these devices periodically to re-orient myself with the real world.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: smurfy

The thing is, whether you take these things individually, or collectively, and observe their overarching effect on the people who rely on them, you see an overwhelmingly worrying picture developing.

I was watching some tv news from 2001 the other day and they showed a group of 7 or 8 teenage girls at a kitchen table chatting away while just one girl appears to be talking on a brick (everyone remember those, right?). Imagine 7 teenage girls at a table today - each looking down at their phone or chatting away on it with perhaps 2 or 3 girls engaging in face to face conversation. My point being the sheer speed at which we have adopted this technology with no time for forethought of how they might affect our lives. It would seem as a consumer society our social standing is being determined by having the latest and greatest gadget before others do. Is this really what we want for ourselves and our children? Madness, utter madness.

No, but it does make survival of the fittest easier when it broken down, where the host feel all useless.