GPS shoes

[Kat Kanning]

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/10/30/bay-area-expert-weighs-in-on-gps-shoes-for-alzheimers-patients/

Coming soon, to a police state near you!  It's not just for old people any more!

[Lloyd Danforth]

And, yet a great idea when used properly. We might be faced with the necessity of resorting to such devices for our younger sister who is afflicted with Aphasia.

[KBCraig]

It's not just for old people any more!

Look who was first to reply! 

I agree with Lloyd, though: it's a great idea if kept in private hands.

[Kat Kanning]

a lot of technology being developed to track your every move

http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/03/jawbone-up-health-wristband/

[Alex Libman]

C'mon, stop bashing technology.  It is far more likely to liberate us from statism than to entrap us.

The state can use many things to its advantage, but that doesn't make those things bad in of themselves.  I've been talking about GPS tracking for a long time as a way to reduce the cost of taking care of dependents (children, mentally ill, prisoners / indentured individuals, etc) while also allowing them a better quality of life.  This means less perceived "need" for public schools, government aid to the elderly, prisons (for the less violent criminals), etc.

[Tom Sawyer]

Alex one fly in the ointment of your belief is that most people these days are very much risk adverse to the point of "you can never be too safe".

Although, I tend to agree that many of the technologies that "Big Brother" creates end up being used again him. As an example the internet, and other computery goodness.

An interesting book I picked up by Peter Huber called Orwell's Revenge

George Orwell's "1984" and it's bleak vision of the future has long haunted the imagination. In a move which turns the computer against Orwell's own text, Peter Huber scanned all of Orwell's writings into a computer, using the machine to rewrite the book completely, using Orwell's own language.

In George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, the telescreen-which spies on its captive audience members and fills their minds with propaganda-is the instrument that makes possible the totalitarian state's absolute control. Huber (Galileo's Revenge) believes Orwell was fundamentally wrong in assuming that electronic media would facilitate mind control. On the contrary, he argues, today's telecommunications world-spanning cable television, personal computer networks, cellular phones and so forth-offers a multiplicity of choices in information and fosters the exchange of ideas.

In the book clever citizens rework the telescreens to be able to communicate to each other much like the internet.

[Alex Libman]

Thanks for info about that book, it sounds very interesting.

I don't see how risk aversion is "a fly in the ointment" of my "belief".  You only live once, and most people ascribe a very high value to their lives, and the lives of their dependents.  Not all risk aversion methods are rational, but being able to track your dependents' location makes a whole lot of sense - if there's no contribution to risk of cancer then I'd even go for implants rather than shoes.  Absence of a government monopoly of law enforcement would mean everyone has to be just a little bit more responsible...

[Tom Sawyer]

I meant that most people want  the gooberment to do everything possible to protect them from every imagined threat.  Of course ignoring that the gooberment itself is the cause of many of the biggest threats to their safety.

Sorry I was unclear about that.

[Free libertarian]

...another reason to embrace being bare footed.   

[Tom Sawyer]

Fine for you patchouli stinkin' hippies!

[Lloyd Danforth]

My friend Allan always used too much Patchouli back when it was popular. Everything he owned smelled like it for years after he stopped using it:)

[Jim Johnson]

I tried looking up patchouli stinkin' hippies... the Wikipedia scratch and sniff doesn't work.

[Alex Libman]

Stupid W3C HTML6 committee, I've told them the <holodeck> tag needs an olfaction attribute!

[Russell Kanning]

i am not interested in shoes or a car that can be tracked

[Alex Libman]

Anything can be tracked via AI-integrated high-def video networks (that will someday include hovercams, satellite cams, etc).  As your property rights don't extent up into the airspace indefinitely, they can fly right over your house, and follow you wherever you may go.  Some bots will even have sensors to pick up things that cannot be seen by the human eye, including heat sources, pollutants, etc.

Long live open-source liberty, for secrecy is dead!