Paranoia in the age of information

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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First of all, paranioa is a healthy reaction to the type of society we live in.

Old news: license plates, credit card tracking systems, satellite cell phone tracking, internet website tracking, ect. The list can go on and on. . . . for the amount of info collected and gathered into marketing strategies aimed at your bank account.

New news: eyeball tracking systems, your every word recorded, data pool, information retrevial, fact sheets that map out the mathematics of your facial features. Satellites that track your every foot step, cameras on the sides of buildings. cameras up your ass, in your teeth, invisible nanomachines that fly into your mouth and infiltrate your blood system.

Okay, Okay I’m getting carried away, but the point is not lost. In this age, information is the new currency and those who hold monopoly over such data banks crush any chance of independence/freedom you could hope to have. The noose is only getting tighter. What begins as protection from terrorists, becomes a new way to shove a holgram of your favorite beer in your optical range, that’s right, a holgoram. Agumented realtity that fucks with your identity because one minute your john smith, the next minute your a lobster or batman or a celebrity and nobody knows who you are except the satellites. I could rant and rave like this forever ever but my point is this

paranoia is healthy and anybody who accuses you of being weak because of you suspicions is really the ignorant one. These people who claim not to be paranoid are not hip to the real situation going on.

INFOTAINMENT!!! INFOPOLICE!!! YOU ARE BEING WATCHED!!! you can look at that as a threat or you can take heed and be more vilgilant about you privacy.

Hell, I dont care if you whack off to wierd porn, that’s not the point. The point is crucial survival is at hand. Information is what the universe is based on. You are the same as the dna of a wooden chair. But the lumber lords will ship you down the river in big cut down tree style if you dont watch the watchers.

:astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished: :astonished:

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I don’t think paranioa is a healthy reaction, it is a more of a normal reaction to overreacting. We are not to this technological extreme yet, but we could be in a few decades or centuries.

how do you suggest to be more vigilant about your privacy that actually has an effect on the CEO’s and the Power dogs.

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“Crime is a product of social excess.”-- Lenin

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it probably doesn’t affect them, but i was considering taking a picket sign out onto a major rotary just for shits and giggles. A sign that says “Are you prepared for Y3k?”

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Kevconman, you’re describing Panopticism. Foucault wrote extensively about this, as a reaction to Jeremy Bentham’s design for a prison where the inmates can be spied on at all times.

Foucault extrapolates this into the rest of the world and believes we’re living in a surveillance society, and that this is a form of control. It’s really a form of state-run terrorism…

Check the Wikipedia reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Paranoia wasn’t the prescription for this system, because Foucault didn’t believe paranoia changed anything fundamentally. He prescribed resistance.

I have lots of respect for Foucault’s ideas and this is one of his best.

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Another argument against the authority of the state is the fact that through the right to free speech, these kinds of conspiracies, even if they are not really happening, can be believed to be happening by citizens, which of course makes them paranoid. In turn, they may react irrationally and even break the law as a means to defend themselves from the effects of the conspiracy.

For example, the court asks why Joe killed a man. He responds, “I thought he was in a cult, or the CIA, and was stalking my.” The court responds “but he wasn’t, and you are guilty of murder.” Joe says “it is because of the possibility that concpiracies be formed and printed in literature on the internet that I even came upon this idea, you fucking incompetent asshole.”

Anyway, I think I’m being gaslighted right now: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

Every night when I go to get my van from storage, the lid to my cooler is moved two feet from where I put it each night. This happens each and every night. I expect that I have a GPS tracking device on my vehicles, which explains how my vehicles are located.

There are several other strange coincidences that have happened, but I won’t explain them. You will, no doubt, call me crazy, and that’s fine.

My point for the world, and for the state that allows this to happens, is that when I catch these people…I’m going to kill them. This will be the “states” fault.

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On this topic, I’m pleased to see some interest in Foucault’s ideas.

Since I got here, I’ve been stunned that 90% of the disussion is Neitzsche, and the rest divvied up with Heidegger, Descartes and a couple others.

Are there no postemodernists here?