It is a time of freedom and fear, of Gaia and of borders, of many paths and the widening of
a universal toll road, emptying country and swelling cities, of the public bought into
privacy and the privacy of the public sold into invisible data banks and knowing
algorithms. It is the time of the warrior's peace and the miser's charity, when the
planting of a seed is an act of conscientious objection.
These are the times when maps fade and direction is lost. Forwards is backwards now, so we glance sideways at the strange lands through which we are all passing, knowing for certain only that our destination has disappeared. We are unready to meet these times, but we proceed nonetheless, adapting as we wander, reshaping the Earth with every tread. Behind us we have left the old times, the standard times, the high times. Welcome to the irregular times. The Bush Admininstration was stymied in its attempts to foist Total Information Awareness, a program putting your public and private information on a centralized government computer so the government can observe you for patterns in your behavior, on the American people. This you know. What you may not know is that since Total Information Awareness was sidelined, a new program started with financial support from the Bush Administration has taken its place. This new program also collects public and private information about you in a computer database so the government can observe you for patterns in your behavior. Guess what it's called? That's right -- the Matrix. (Source: New York Times March 14, 2004) Return to the Irregular Times Main Page
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