The terrorism schism--whoring technology
Google Earth is the newest security scapegoat in the ongoing war against terrorism. The aborted plot to blow up JFK airport announced last week by the FBI contained the interesting informational nugget that the bad guys were using Google Earth to plan their plot. Several articles have appeared in the press since then suggesting that the Google Earth views should be banned as a security precaution.
The CNET editorial listed above rightly points out the silliness of this kind of Luddite censorship and suggest (tongue-in-cheek) that cell phones should be banned because 9/11 terrorists used them.
Technology is agnostic. No matter how much we might wish that some high-tech capability only worked for "good guys", it is a useless yearning...technology is apolitical, amoral and vaguely whorish--providing services, not just to the highest bidder, but to any sailor with the price, new in town or not.
Tech is about more than buying a phone or logging into a satellite viewing program, it is about a lifestyle. The people who best understand and subsequently exploit technology are the ones who grew up on it, viscerally understand it and crave it--Western running dog capitalists. A kid growing up in a primitive society with restrictive, even brutal customs, a lack of tolerance and respect for the majority of the human race, suppression of the rights of women and a fanatical sense of narcissistic self-righteousness can never truly compete in a war of technology with our open-minded, video game playing consumerist children.
The war of technology will always be won by the true believers-- in technology.
Posted on June 05, 2007
