BIG BROTHER AND THE "THANK YOU CARD"

One of my friends in East Texas was telling me that the regional chain of food stores he shops at gives him "discounts" when he uses his "thank you card" during purchases. Apparently, this little euphemistically named "thank you card" keeps a digital record of where he was, when he was there, what he bought, what he paid, how often he bought the items, when he goes shopping, and so on. I told him he should call it his "Fuck You Card", because they are creating a digital profile of him that they can sell to others , including his shopping habits and more, and it makes it easier for vendors to market items to him, much like the music service "Pandora" (ironically named because Pandora opened the box and let all the evils in the world loose) is able to "suggest" music you may like based on your past choices. Unfortunately, as I understand it, many of his fellow East Texans are like him, blissfully in a sea of naivete, thinking it is just a good will gesture of the store, giving you lots of yummy discounts. Remember son, there is no such thing as a free lunch. I think he hasn't a clue about the darker side of digital tracking. I tell you one thing, I wouldn't ever use a Fucking "Thank you card" no matter WHAT the discounts.

Now, I'm gonna sound like my friend Alex Jones, but you must understand that the push toward digitizing everything is not a benign and pointless endeavor. As my pal NfoHackerz sez, "It's all ones and zeroes."

Have you ever wondered WHY the gov has pushed to end analog broadcasts ?

Analog is unwieldy and messy. The analog world doesn't fit neatly in file folders in a computer.

Take a second and Riddle me this Riddler, if you (i.e. the larger you, as in the gov) were really and truly wanting to put a Big Brother, ala 1984 in place, what ONE STEP would be critical in all the aspects of public surveillance and keeping track of citizens ? Gotta hint? Digitization.
Once you have everyone's life digitized, then you can track and manage them. Why does the traffic department want DIGITIZED fingerprints of you ? Why do places want to pay you with a digital money transfer card ?

In those dystopic visions of the future such as 1984 and others, where information is "managed" and only approved versions of history and current events are published, it is vital to have every communication media digitized. With a digital audio file, I can make all kinds of weird and improbable things "real". With digital versions of video, I could make Bush shake hands with Attila the Hun. Total data control (TDC) is the goal of governments. Tracking, quantifying, qualifying, and storing, bits of information about ALL of us, is something that is not a new goal. The Romans had a census for various reasons, taxation being only one. It has seemed that , throughout history, the more horrible, the more tyrannical a government is, the more they want to abolish the rights of certain classes, the more they want to make their own version of history be the only one available, the more interested they are in numbers, in "metrics" and in keeping extremely accurate counts of everything. In short, being "anal" about things, is also a trait of assholes in government. One prime example is Nazi Germany. As a "half-Jew", knowing that some of my distant relatives were probably murdered by these sick bastards, I have used due diligence in becoming as knowledgeable about Nazis as possible. Their "attention to detail" is mindboggling. In one concentration camp, not only did they keep track of which prisoners had head lice, not only did they count the individual lice on each individual prisoner, but they further classified and MEASURED the size of each louse found on each prisoner's head.

In fact, I propose that we can measure the possible evilness of a government by measuring their tendency to apply metrics to everything and everyone, to a bizarre level of detail.

The Communists in Russia, kept jars containing personal items which had been in contact with certain people that they felt bore watching, and would keep stacks and stacks and rooms and rooms of these, dutifully labeled, because they thought that keeping the items in airtight jars would "concentrate" the scent, and if they ever had to track the person, using dogs, all they had to do was to open the jar and let the dogs sniff the scented item(s).

The Chinese emperors, not the nicest bunch of cats in the world, were also obsessed with counting and keeping track of people and things.

This brings up another point, and that is, I assert, that the more evil the regime, the more bureaucrats and the more intricate their bureaucracy.

This latter point is merely the logical extension of the previous points, and goes hand in hand with the preceding points.

Now, why in God's name , do the evil people, want to keep good records on people, their comings and goings, their purchases, their communications, etc.? Why? It's simple. Because, they , being he heartless mechanistic bastards they are, labor under the misguided idea that metrics equals being able to predict things. Many people who roll in the slimy mire of an idea that they are "scientists" or "skeptics" or "financial wizards" actually think that mathematics is the key toward being able to predict world events , the actions of people, etc..

Just like in the movie in which there is a Department of Future Crime, or something like that (I think the movie is from another of the Phillip K. Dick novels or short stories), these dumbass bastards are sold on the idea (by other idiots) that somehow, if you apply the right formula, and widget it around a bit, you can predict social movements, human behavior, political trends, etc..

Now, I contend that this is so much bullshit, and that predicting some things is far easier, and some things, are just outright impossible to predict. Think about our present situation. More people are getting out of jobs, prices continue to rise, some morons are agitating the work up the redneck fringe, and their counterparts in the north, and atop all of this, health care is getting in more of a mess BECAUSE Obama didn't have the cajones to stand up to the repubs and use the bully pulpit and the demo majority and ram through a single payer plan. Gas prices go up, less people can go on vacations, smaller tourist towns hurt, more people lose their businesses, and more people lose their jobs, so, we don't need to dig up Michel de Nostradamus to predict that something uncool is brewing right here in River City.

You don't tell the mentally challenged giant of a kid over and over that the little kid is making fun of him over and over without Doofus knocking the holy shit out of the poor Dweezil you're lying about.

But, for every predictable event, there is an equal and opposite unpredictable one. For example, a UFO might land and threaten us, and Ronald Reagan's "fantasy" of all of mankind linking hands and singing kumbaya against a common enemy, could happen.

Look, as many high tech computers as there are, as many math wizzes there are, they can't even predict the friggin' lottery numbers before the fact. And, with that, you are just talking about a finite number of balls, finite number of combinations , etc., something far less complex and unpredictable as human behavior and world events (such as an asteroid bashing into Earth without warning).

Believe you me, if being calculating, exact , scientific, and number conscious, could be a winning combination, Nazi Germany would have won the war, and Einstein would have devised his own personal lottery winning machine. But, it isn't.

Let's see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita win the Power Ball lottery by accurately predicting just the winning numbers. If he could do that, over and over and over, then possibly I would be on my way to saying "perhaps he has something there", but he hasn't, he won't, and I rest my case.