• Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    Isaac Asimov had a pretty scathing critique of George Orwell’s 1984. He said that it was unrealistic that a pervasive surveillance state could exist and be effective on the grounds that someone has to do the watching, and the manpower required would make it unfeasable. The data centers aren’t being built so we can have pictures of anime waifus with messed up fingers. They’re being built to sort and correlate the massive amounts of incoming information from things like flock cameras and any phone app that decides to sell your information. They’re necessary infrastructure for a fascist surveillance state. Yes, there are false positives. Fascists do not care.

    The companies on the other hand…

    Will get bailouts.

    • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Man, too bad Asimov apparently didn’t read the Appendix to 1984, because Orwell agreed with him. Canonically, the society in 1984 falls to a revolution a few decades after the book, because it’s impossible for the security state to continue spying on everyone.

      Lots of people missed this crucially important part of the book because the Appendix was edited out of many editions, which is ironic as hell considering the context.