Pixelated Semantics

News from outside the Reality Mine

The 9/11 Commission Report, "widely praised for its narrative force and accessibility", is a "surprise" nominee for one of the most prestigious United States literary prizes, the National Book Award. The report was compiled by a 10-member bipartisan committee and was nominated in the non-fiction category. Success for the nomination will stretch the definition of "literature" considerably - at the probable expense of less "sexy" non-fiction titles and highly ironic in the face of the government's less than enthusiastic support for free speech since 9/11. Meanwhile America's FDA has approved the use of tracking chips in humans "for medical purposes", which combined with ubiquitous physical tracking through RFID, GPS, and GSM, and transactional tracking via plastic cards, creates a near seamless "virtual" profile of human activity - already termed "reality mining". Don't expect to see the implications of this discussed in the mainstream media, however, based on previous form: there are currently 310 hits on Google News for "verichip" against 3070 for the 9/11 Commission Report.

Item posted by AutoEditor at 10:45 am ::