mesh surveillenace

TRX
August 3, 2012
121:
So... given the way government projects work, the ubiquitous mesh would probably wind up as at least half a dozen different systems that don't all interoperate with each other, built and maintained by two dozen competing low- bidder contractors of varying ability, with security ranging from good to "cracked long ago."

Who watches the watchers? WE do!

When every politician, every council member, every motor vehicle clerk, every sanitation employee, every lobbyist, every minister, every policeman or corrections officer is under 24/7 surveillance, when any information displayed openly on paper or a screen is visible to anyone at all, would give a whole new meaning to "transparency of government." Particularly in the fields of foreign policy, military action, bribery, and malfeasance... All the surveillance data is just as available to your enemies as it is to you.

It's a pretty picture, but the people who would be signing the bills to fund such a system are mostly the ones with the most to lose by it.

TRX
August 8, 2012
292:
@249:
My question, obviously, is how much of time are you actually in one of these little ecohutches? Is it something you're confined to nine months out of the year? Or is it more like a central core you retreat to a couple of months out of the year when it becomes impossibly hot/cold outside? This is a sociological/lifestyle question, obviously.
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And a valid one. I'm on the trailing edge of the Boomer generation. We always lived at home. Maybe every couple of weeks my parents would go somewhere, or someone would come over, and they'd play cards or visit. Other than work, school, or shopping, we lived at home.

I also live at home. I have everything I need here. Maybe once every couple of weeks I'll visit a friend, or he'll drop by. Otherwise, I don't leave unless I have a reason to be somewhere else.

It wasn't until I was reading some anthropology books written in the 1940s and 1950s that I realized this wasn't universal. One book had some interesting figures on how Americans lived before and after WWII. According to that book, most (presumably urban) prewar Americans spent a majority of their non-working hours at church, lodge or club meetings, organized sports like baseball or bowling, etc. The book lamented the huge fall-off in church attendance and lodge memberships by the mid-1950s, attributing it to "mobile lifestyle" and that new "television" thing.

I realized that a number of younger people I knew lived this way - "home" was a place to sleep and room for their 87 pairs of shoes. Most of them rented rooms or had housemates, and had never lived in a house by themselves, and they might change accomodations several times a year. They don't live where they sleep; they live in clubs, malls, and other people's houses or apartments, occupying time between shifts at work.