This is an important discussion to have and everyone has it the wrong way. Premise 1: China is a surveillance state. Premise 2: America is a surveillance state. Conclusion: America will soon look like China. NO NO NO NO NO. China is a middle class the size of the United States on top of a feudal system of poverty the size of India being run by a command economy attempting to make its way in a capito-socialist world. "If China, therefore the rest of the world" simply doesn't work. Ai Weiwei is under heavy state surveillance for two reasons: 1) He's the only Chinese westerners can name besides Mao Tse Tung, Confucious and Yao Ming 2) He endlessly, relentlessly says nasty shit about the Chinese government. In the US, we have all sorts of people who say nasty shit about the US government. A lot of them are in the US government. That right there kinda nukes the whole parallel. Not to mention the economics of totalitarianism are entirely different: China can afford to have two dudes standing like palace guards while Ai Weiwei pisses. For that matter, Ai Weiwei can afford to cover the floor of a warehouse with handmade porcelain sunflower seeds. Chinese surveillance is active - the Chinese go out and snag whatever they can, whenever they can, however they can, using whoever they can (would you believe I've read this book? I have, back when it was topical! I've even interviewed the author!). American surveillance, on the other hand, is passive - we scoop up whatever is already there and then try and figure out how to do something with it. The NSA is never going to have two dudes sitting at a restaurant watching you to see if you do something because it's a gross waste of resources. The FBI? Sure. But they need a good goddamn reason. In China, saying nasty shit about the government qualifies as a good goddamn reason... and if we learned anything from J Edgar Hoover it qualifies here, too. The difference is Chinese culture has been about continuity and the state for the past 4000 years. American culture has been about individualism and the right of self-determination for the past 300. Thus, Americans get itchy when J Edgar snoops on MLK. Americans get itchy when the NSA starts throwing sops to the DEA. The Chinese are too busy trying to bust out of a 1-party system to focus on vagueries like that. We're talking a nation that met OWS-style protests with tanks and that performs 5,000 executions per year here - let's not be too hasty to draw parallels. The problem in the United States is retention. Yes, you put a lot out on the wires. With a wiretap, someone has to be interested in what you're saying right now for them to have access to it. The problem of Big Data, be it Google, Disney, AT&T or the NSA, is that they're recording it all in case they need it later. There's no context to any of it - or more specifically, the context isn't required, which allows a lot of leeway. We will have to rebalance our needs for privacy and convenience. It will happen. But saying "Ai Weiwei is living in our future" is disingenuous.
I was just gonna post this! Very interesting read. Especially this quote: One thing that is absolutely insane with the Disney Magic band is the ride photos. After your day in the park, you can go on the Disney site and order photos of yourself on the rides. The bizarre part is that the photos are always of you, no matter where on the ride you sit. Even if you go with a group and all sit in different parts of the rollercoaster train, Disney will show you all of the correct photos because they know exactly on what seat you rode. Restaurant reservation? When you arrive, a cast member will know you're there and approach you by name. Disney would call it magic. I call it creepy as fuck. But I have to admit I am guilty of doing the same thing voluntarily. In an hour or so I'll go running with my smartphone, GPS and 3G on, heart rate monitor around my chest, tracking every beat and every step in Endomondo. At least it's my choice to do so.The individual under this kind of life, with no rights, has absolutely no power in this land, how can they even ask you for creativity? Or imagination, or courage or passion?
So my family does pyro. Like, DOT 1.1 professional displays. Have done for 40 years. We do ours with highway flares. That way you can light the quickmatch and it goes up when you want. But we do little shows that aren't timed to music because they're more fun. If you have a choice between 1) touching a highway flare to an explosive fuse that ignites a quarter stick of dynamite to throw two pounds of flammable chemicals several hundred feet in the air 2) Pressing "play" on a computer Go with 1. At least, if you know what you're doing. Thing is, we do it for us. Disney does it for its customers. As such, they've been out of the highway flare business for a long fuckin' time. For that matter, they don't like the smoke. For that matter, they don't like the variation you get from minute changes in lift charge, shell aerodynamics and payload weight. So Disney fires their shells pneumatically. They have computer-controlled air mortars capable of lofting an 8" mortar round a thousand feet in the air. And they aren't detonated with a fuse at all. Disney shells have their own individual radio frequency detonators and squibs on them. And they can time how long it takes for the shell to leave the gun, have the velocity to within a centimeter per second and trigger the shell within six inches of where they want it to be. Disney has always been a no-expenses-spared, customer-facing organization. And that's an important consideration: Disney is not collecting all this data for nefarious purposes, they're doing it to make more money. I'm not about to call Disney a nice organization - they're the biggest shits in Hollywood. But malevolent they ain't. Greedy? Check. Callous? Double-check. Monomaniacal? Absolutely. "Evil?" No more so than any other consumer-facing enterprise. That said, Erik Haseltine went from Hughes Aircraft to head of Disney Imagineering to the NSA to associate director of science and technology at ODNI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Haseltine So I will admit there's some overlap. The bizarre part is that the photos are always of you, no matter where on the ride you sit. Even if you go with a group and all sit in different parts of the rollercoaster train, Disney will show you all of the correct photos because they know exactly on what seat you rode.
Isn't there a difference between companies catering to consumers, and companies squeezing every last drop out of their users? I remember a brilliant post here on mobile games and how they trap people into paying for it. I think that is evil, in that it abuses human psychology to make more money. Ads are evil for the same reason to me.
Anyway, Disney is nuts. Admirably at times, but still. They spent $130 million on R&D to create a custom local positioning ride system for one of their rides, because having cars follow a track is not good enough apparently"Evil?" No more so than any other consumer-facing enterprise.
Pooh's Hunny Hunt differs in that it utilises an array of sensors as opposed to a dedicated wire embedded in the floor. A custom local positioning system (LPS; not to be confused with GPS) is used to manage these sensors. The patented control system works by directional data being relayed from a master control computer directly to the vehicles which are fashioned to resemble honey pots. This data is then used to move an individual honey pot car through a complicated matrix embedded within the actual floor tiles. Every few seconds, the master computer generates a random path and ‘steers’ the honey pot in real-time, so as the cars roll through the ride the vehicles are, in fact, being told where to go. Because this system is in real-time, they can maneuver accordingly in just fractions of a second. This also allows for spontaneous yet synchronized ‘honey pot choreography’ with groups of honey pots (as many as 8 in a single show scene) appearing to ‘dance’ with the others, often timed with ‘beats’ in the music. Due to limitless variations possible, each journey through the attraction is unique.
That documentary, The Fake Case looks interesting. I look forward to seeing it.