EVERYONE IS UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Ever since I moved to London I felt uneasy with the proliferation of video cameras here in The City.

The British had a major problem with the IRA in the last decade or so; I don't blame them for how they dealt with the problem - put cameras everywhere!

In any case, anyplace I went - whether to public toilets, a pub or even talking to some babe on the streets there was always a camera watching and recording me and my actions in every minute detail.

What the fuck for? I felt inhibitedfrom burning a tag on the streets when I was shit faced drunk.

Sometimes I used to make faces at the cameras, but my friends warned me off, saying "something bad might happen to a lad like you!".

I'm still not sure if they were joking or not, so I stay in at night now.

From: Noam Chomsky Re: "What do you think about the Internet?"

"I think that there are good things about it, but there are also aspects of it that concern and worry me. This is an intuitive response -- I can't prove it -- but my feeling is that, since people aren't Martians or robots, direct face-to-face contact is an extremely important part of human life. It helps develop self-understanding and the growth of a healthy personality.

"You just have a different relationship to somebody when you're looking at them than you do when you're punching away at a keyboard and some symbols come back. I suspect that extending that form of abstract and remote relationship, instead of direct, personal contact, is going to have unpleasant effects on what people are like. It will diminish their humanity, I think."

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.