We're all going to hell in a handbasket.

[azekeil]

WARNING: This article is deliberately one-sided, in an exploration of extrapolation of current events in a 'worst-case' scenario. However, reassuring comments to the contrary are welcome :)

Is it my imagination, or are world events just getting more stupid as time goes on? Perhaps it's because the events are happening to things that affect me more, ie. the internet and so forth.

The Evidence

• Software Patent law going mad in Europe
• RIAA overzealous in persuing copyright infringements
• Verisign dangerously big for its boots with the non-existant domain redirection fiasco

And of course Micro$oft. I think that's all I need to say on that. Still, so much public attention is on them nowadays that any suspicious or false moves are blown out of proportion - the end result of which is that most of what actually happens is fairly trivial.

Before, of course, the DMCA inspired people like M$ to look into sponsoring hardware vendors to build in licensing tools for media files, effectively taking ownership of the end user's media away from the end user. Oh, and making them unplayable on non-supported OSes too. As far as I know these plans could still be active.

I haven't even begun to mention the huge number of different projects all slowly eroding away our privacy, from RFIDs to ID cards to DNA databases to censorship to dragnet internet usage analysis to the nanny state. Some of it is quite nicely summed up in this article.

And in world politics, of course there is the second Vietnam waiting to happen in Iraq. Our country's getting very paranoid^[1] about the threat of terrorist attacts for being America sympathisers.

I'm beginning to think that our lives are so easy compared to people in third-world countries or in our own pasts that we contintually turn to more and bigger global issues to occupy our attention. Too many people in the world in general. Governments sticking their noses into others' businesses because they might now have the power to launch a devastating remote attack. All because we've got too much time on our hands, and human nature dictates that they're going to get upset at some point and lash out. It's happened recently. It could only be a matter of time before the pressure builds so the safety valves can't cope any more..

In my cynical and conspiratorial mode Blair knows this and is just siding with the most likely winner in all this. We're all going to hell in a handbasket.

---

^[1] Thankswechlser for the link.

Comments

[ev1ldonut.livejournal.com]

/me goes and sits in the corner with a duvet over his head...

eep!

[oscuridad.livejournal.com]

*joins you* *sigh*

[diffrentcolours]

Hey, you forgot hardware-level DRM, and legal mandate thereof ;)

[chocojon.livejournal.com]

I may be missing something by skimming that but there's also Palladium to worry about.
/me goes off to ponder about when people realise what they should be doing and pizza

[diffrentcolours]

Palladium is a form of hardware-level DRM :p

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Argh, I knew there was a better way of explaining it than what I was trying to say with the DMCA stuff!

[gerald_duck]

Nod. We're all doomed.

The best thing I can say in defence of the politicians is that, for the most part, they've inherited shitty messes from their predecessors, and merely made them that little bit shittier. Most haven't snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Radical changes for the better or worse occur very infrequently; what we need is gentle improvement, rather than gentle decline. Politicians are in it for the fame and the glory, though - they want visible results during their half decade of office. Every time a politician does the quick-results thing, not the right thing, the world is tarnished slightly.

I'm quite sure I could do a much better job than the average politician. Equally, I feel it would be a thankless and unrewarding job (assuming I don't stoop to corruption). Also, frankly, the electorate would likely not vote for someone who did the right thing - I'm not saying Major was by any means perfect, but he was at least moderate. As a result, he got portrayed as boring and devoid of Big Ideas. He was voted out.

Here's some sweetness and light, though. People have been being doomed in one way or another for many millennia. We're still here. Humanity and society appear to be fairly resilient. Politics, like everything else, is moving ever more quickly, but does that necessarily mean it is going to suddenly flip from coping to not-coping? Most likely not.

I prod the political machine every now and then, on matters close to my heart. I vote. The rest of the time, I watch in wonderment at how dumb people can be.

Then I get on with my life, hoping like hell that whatever the politicians decide to do, I'll continue to earn enough money, have less taken away as tax than I can afford to lose, find the things I want to buy available in the shops at sensible prices, and won't get nuked or put in prison for anything.

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of that, and herein lies the problem. I don't want a dysfunctional government and a lifestyle that consists of dodging blame and hoping to eek out an existence. What a miserable life. It feels hopeless. Ack, I dismissed all this a LONG time ago; wonder why it's bothering me now.

Anyway, yes, I realise that we've existed happily despite all these amazing acts of stupidity before, and we shall carry on in the future. I don't think I'm afraid of change, so much, as the fact that we've existed in the past but never before have there been SO many people in the world, with nothing better to do than interfere in the business of others, all made possible by technology. And people seem to be getting more stupid, and nosey. It's uncharted territory, and I'm afraid.

[teadaemon.livejournal.com]

Sadly, I think you're broadly right.

I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next couple of years, but either we'll all end up under the heel of big business and privileged interests, or there's going to be a more or less peaceful revolution of some kind.

I notice that useless fuckwit Blunkett's back with the idea of collecting DNA from everyone in the country and keeping it on file, just in case.

Well, to paraphrase Charlton Heston: They can have my DNA when they take it from my cold, dead body!

[azekeil.livejournal.com]

Peaceful? Well, I hope there is a revolution of some kind, but I somehow doubt it's going to be peaceful.

I of course am my own personal revolution all by myself. Lucky for me I'm not one of your liberal greenos, or I'd get deeply upset and frustrated that my capitalist oppressors were actually sympathising with me.

What I mean by all that is I try to live my life in my own way, which is not usually the way of everyone. I wear what I like to work, take things that step further, push people's boundaries. And they like me for it. Still, at least I'm mixing with the right people at least :)

[gerald_duck]

I think the territory is charted - but that things are happening ever more quickly. Gone are the days of the "hundred years war", for example.

People have always interfered in idiotic and unjust ways. The crusades are an example with obvious resonances. (-8

[jikatal.livejournal.com]

Viva La Revolucion !

[stuartl.livejournal.com]

We're all going to hell in a handbasket.

Going? Is this not our own manufactured hell?

I am constantly amazed...

[lazrus-armagedn.livejournal.com]

..that people still think that governments are anything other than a club for vested interest groups, to promote their interests

How anyone can imagine that it is for the benefit of the people is beyound me...just take a look at the number of politicians who are a director of this, a memeber of that, an apologist of the other