The cameras *are* on us, it’s only a question of how we’re going to navigate and where (if at all) they will stop.

@GAPS I’ll make my next post extra-cheerful, just for you. Honest, it’s going to be optimistic out the yin yang.

You have to admire the Western companies that use China as their test bed and freely experiment with new advances. Hopefully, somewhere along the line these same corporations can reveal a better use and value.

Excellent link filled rant, there needs to be more of them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m borrowing heavily from this blog/rant

http://www.xtcian.com/arch/002772.php

Corporations, no matter how they were started, no matter how simple and sweet their mission statements may be (i.e. “Don’t Be Evil”) are treated as people, and these “people” are sociopaths. They may have legal rights and personhood, but they are completely bereft of human emotions, experiences and, well, humanity. They exist only to do one thing, make a profit. They don’t care how they do it (see link filled rant from Kevin) they don’t care who or what they chew up, they only care about 1 thing, profit. If that means catering to the “freedom” crowd here in the USA and then the authoritarian government in China, then they have no problems, as long as they are growing their profits and meeting quarterly expectations.

Look at the common features of sociopaths, and you see that it pretty much has the modern corporation nailed.
http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html

Instead of having “Shallow Emotions” corporations have the advantage of no emotions. They don’t care how many people they lay off, how many fa, they don’t care if their practices are destroying wide swaths of land, keeping an entire nation under the thumb of a dictator or anything, as long as their profits grow.

I hope I’m not taking this too far off track, and I am very much a capitalist, but corporations act this way, will always act this way and we be prepared for this whether we work for one or just have to live along side them.

and by the way, I loved the link filled rant.

If someone knows I like X brand of beer, and that I buy it every Friday night at this Kroger’s, they also know that info about 300 million other people, then they really don’t know anything about me in particular – I’m just a number with associated data and an algorithm that sends me coupons.

“At least, that’s what I tell myself at night.”

Do you ever think that, just maybe, someone, somewhere, has a giant machine that they can use to change small, important things, when no one’s looking?

Or even when they are?