A Prisoner In My Own Skin...

For this blog I would like to focus on the discussion that we had in class. We’ve discussed many times in class how we as a society are advancing, technologically, at an alarming speed. We often marvel at the rate in which our technology advances, improves and leaps forward. At the same time there are many of us that see a danger in this and are always more reluctant to make that step forward along with all the other mice lead by the sound of a technological piper. I believe that both Maggie and Erika have picked up on this idea and mention it in their posts and here I would like to elaborate on it more.

After the events of September 11^th the world in which we, Americans, live has changed – and I dare say, will never be the same. In many ways we were much like an infant, naïve and ignorant to so many dangers that exist in our world. Like a child we discovered these dangers first-hand and were burned by them, terribly so. The reaction to this, however, is not unlike people when they are betrayed for the first time or after their heart is broken over the loss of their first love.

Suddenly everyone was suspect. We trusted no one. We built an impenetrable fortress out of our kingdom and built our walls high. We then turned our eyes internally, looking for danger around every corner and expecting it everywhere – we would not be caught unawares again. Suddenly we were forced to give up our rights and we did so without question. We forfeited our privacy, our freedom and our control all in the name of ‘security’. We forgot things like mercy, forgiveness and common human kindness because our ‘enemies’ could not be trusted with an inch less they take a mile.

Curiously though, I have never felt more terrified in all my life. Even now, as I write this blog, I am afraid that my thoughts, my opinions, may somehow be misunderstood and I will be labeled. I cannot walk into an airport anywhere in this country without feeling in some way as if I’ve entered into a maximum security prison where the guards have little patience or mercy. Once I pick up my boarding ticket and I am assigned a number I cease to be a human being but become an inhuman thing called a ‘passenger’ and during this transition from human to seat-filler I am processed, combed, probed and analyzed as if, somehow, I were already suspected of being a criminal.

Technology furthers this cause. Perhaps I am paranoid but I know that my walls no longer shield me, my conversation are no longer private, my entire history comprised of ink and paper is available for scrutiny at any given time locally or digitally. The cellphone I carry in my pocket isn’t only a device that allows me to connect to the rest of the world but is a homing device that can locate me anywhere in the world in the matter of milliseconds and if I had a passport it would be no different. Even my traffic on the internet can be monitored to analyze my interests which can help in profiling me, identifying my level of threat – and need I add that spyware does this for them.

This brings me to the VeriChip. The very idea of inserting a piece of mechanical equipment inside my body, beneath my skin, terrifies me. Would people feel the same way I do if, instead of a tiny implant undetectable beneath the skin, it was a barcode tattooed across our wrists? Across our foreheads? As banal as the image seems it doesn’t even begin to broach the possibilities that this ‘chip’ provides.

At the moment it is only a chip that activated on a radio frequency that works as a means of identification. But once this becomes standard, where will the possibilities end when the precedence has been set? Could it be used to monitor our habits? Would we be given a speeding ticket as our chip is monitored, traveling faster than the zone we are in? Could they document our friends? The times we meet? The frequency of our visits? Would they know when and how often we assemble (since assemblage now is another right we’ve given up)? Could these devices be used as control devices? Tazers already implanted inside our skin that could be activated remotely to keep us in line? Perhaps it could be as I mentioned, used as a target by anyone with the frequency to do us harm?

McLuhan was a prophet in the way that he saw the many dangers facing our technological society well in advance. I wonder, though, if he even conceived the idea of the dangers and problems facing us in this day and age. Is this the track that our linear thinking has paved for us?