Uncle Sam is Watching

I was just about to devour a healthy serving of ice cream when I found myself staring into the beady eyes of a fly that had found a resting spot on the handle of my spoon. Normally such an incident would not have alarmed me; I simply would have "shooed" the fly away with a simple hand motion. However, today was different. Today I felt the necessity to leap across the room and smash the fly into the wall; not out of vengeance for its having interrupted my ice cream eating experience, but rather because I was half expecting a trail of silver to be smeared on the wall – the remains of a blogject. Bleeker has made me wary of my surroundings – the birds in the sky, the insects in my room, and even the bacteria in the ice cream. The "Internet of Things," as described by Bleeker, is a growing network that will encompass all niches of society. Privacy will become a thing of the past, for escaping the constant scrutiny of the "network of things" means to embrace complete isolation.

Americans, and people of the world in general, now find themselves in age where the concern over terrorism perpetuates fear of government back home. This is evinced by the government’s passage of the Patriot Act. Such policies make it easier for the government to wiretap and eavesdrop on people’s private conversations. Governments spying on their people is nothing new; such activities are reminiscent of the actions carried out by the secret police organizations created in communist, fascist, or other authoritarian regimes of the past. The current world political situation is so exacerbating that now people within countries with strong democratic traditions are starting to embrace these surreptitious activities which undermine privacy. People are now willing to give up their rights in order to ensure more "security." In this current atmosphere, the prospect of an internet of things is quite terrifying.

Attaching GPS and sensors to pigeons and automobiles can turn passive things into blogjects that gather important information. Bringing physical objects into the networked internet under such circumstances has positive benefits with few negative consequences. However, the "Internet of Things" has already progressed beyond these humble beginnings. For example, the Sony Aibo dog can wander around and automatically create blogs of its random musings. Considering this, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that in the future there will be teams of nanobots that can creep through any crevice and publish their musings for the entire world to see. Such blogjects could be used not only by the government, but also by more malicious entities such as the creators of spyware.

The desire for security will cause people to support the existence of blogjects that permeate all aspects of society. There is a general trend of acceptance: people are willing to accept technological advances that diminish privacy rights. For example, no one complains that clothing stores (and perhaps even changing rooms in these stores) are under video surveillance. As Bleeker points out, people have to adapt their behavior when they know they are sharing the world with blogjects. The existence of a ubiquitous network of things would initially lead to a repression of free speech – people would be careful what they say if they were always in the public light. Eventually, free thought might be jeopardized too. Humanity would then find itself living in the world of Minority Report.