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| Government is like Cockroaches - Omnipresent and Unwanted |
TOTAL SURVEILLANCE!
dark net| - Does The End Of Cash Mean The End Of Privacy?
The last people to trust are the government! m/r
Cash is facing its inevitable obsolescence — and we're facing a future in which every exchange we make will be monitored and examined
When was the last time you used cash? Or rather, when was the last time you needed to use cash?
Many vending machines now use contactless payment; hovering your phone near them is enough to dispense that sweet, sweet sugar water. Small vendors can use Square to take credit cards. If you owe a friend a beer, you might just use Venmo to settle your debt, rather than try to rustle up the bills. Increasingly, it seems, there’s less reason to ever sully yourself with the grimy physical reality of cash. Even a stick of of gum at a bodega can be had by just swiping some plastic.
When we think about the decreasing importance of cash, if we do, it’s mostly in terms of convenience. It’s just easier to not carry cash; cash can get lost or stolen, and because it’s not tied to our identities, it’s hard to get back. It’s informal and off the information grid, representing only itself and saying nothing about its bearer (putting aside those stories about the vast amount of cash allegedly containing cocaine residue). It’s anonymous in ways that often make it inconvenient for we the consumers.
Conceived of that way—primarily as an
inconvenient medium of information exchange—cash’s obsolescence seems
an inevitability. But what will replace it? If history is any guide, the
next stage in the evolution of money will be completely intangible,
existing as ledger marks in digital databases around the world. Bitcoin
notwithstanding, it will likely not be
decentralized and transparent; it seems much more likely that
governments and bankers will maintain their control of currency,
creating an opaque system in which we will all be enmeshed, and from
which the financiers will take their cut. Money will be tied to
identity, its routes traced and monitored. It’ll be a surveillance
dystopia, but not of the clumsy, grubby Phildickian variety. It’ll be an
ultra-functional, shiny and minimalist nightmare, the kind where you’re
not supposed to care how it works, as long as it works for you. Kind of
like an iPhone.
-go to links-
Many vending machines now use contactless payment; hovering your phone near them is enough to dispense that sweet, sweet sugar water. Small vendors can use Square to take credit cards. If you owe a friend a beer, you might just use Venmo to settle your debt, rather than try to rustle up the bills. Increasingly, it seems, there’s less reason to ever sully yourself with the grimy physical reality of cash. Even a stick of of gum at a bodega can be had by just swiping some plastic.
When we think about the decreasing importance of cash, if we do, it’s mostly in terms of convenience. It’s just easier to not carry cash; cash can get lost or stolen, and because it’s not tied to our identities, it’s hard to get back. It’s informal and off the information grid, representing only itself and saying nothing about its bearer (putting aside those stories about the vast amount of cash allegedly containing cocaine residue). It’s anonymous in ways that often make it inconvenient for we the consumers.
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| What to Wear in Total Surveillance |
-go to links-
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