Nightmare about Technology.
OK, I just had a very disturbing and realistic nightmare.
I dreamed I was at my parents' church, singing with the choir for a Christmas celebration. My parents couldn't go for some reason, nor could any of my siblings, but I really wanted to go so I had walked there (my parents' church is about four miles away from my parents' home).
I got there a couple minutes late, but Mass hadn't started yet. They were taping the celebration, so the simultaneous video of the choir was showing up on a screen next to the altar area.
But it wasn't just video and sound. There were also these weird little bubbles floating next to about four people's heads, like pop-up bubbles that show up on certain TV shows and YouTube when they want you to know something extra about the people or events.
The information that the video showed was: gender, age, height, weight, diseases that the person had, and whether or not the woman was having her period. The three women displayed were all having their period, and the man had some latent venereal disease that he had gotten many many years ago (the man was about 65 or 70).
Obviously, the people whose information was being displayed were very disturbed, and the rest of us were pretty bothered by it too. So we all tried to start singing the opening hymn, but it was pretty weak and we were all sort of singing at different times.
So finally someone spoke up. I don't remember if it was me or someone else, but someone spoke up and asked our priest what it was.
He apologized, saying there was some new laws about technology, and that the congregation had voted to use the technology to see if there were any people with diseases in the congregation, especially venereal diseases, so that they could protect themselves properly.
The priest went on to say that he was personally against the law and the technology itself but the law's influence was so strong that he couldn't fight it. He said it was being led by a group of researchers around the world (he showed us a map of the world highlighted with thousands of white dots, mostly swathed over Africa, and said that every white dot was a researcher). He told us that only a very few researchers actually did research, and that most of them were in charge of suppressing any laws that would interfere with researching, collecting, and displaying information.
In Africa, collecting information was easy, as their were few laws in most countries regulating it. In America, it was harder, but the researchers got around it by posting "disclosure allowances" as part of health care and health insurance websites. Anyone who clicked on a link that said something like, "want to know more about your health?" signed themselves up for the program. Most younger computer users knew how to avoid this, since most of us are very good at avoiding spam and pop-up ads, but the late-middle-aged computer users who accidentally clicked once, were forever signed up for the research program.
And people wanted to know about other people. Of course, those who voted in favor of it thought to themselves, well, I will never sign up for the program myself, but I want to know about other people and their health secrets.
The priest explained it to us, how the laws argued that it was participants' own fault in two ways, once by getting the disease, and once by signing up for the program.
Of course it was obvious that people had been tricked and misled, but the laws and politics behind the movement were so strong that our priest felt powerless to fight it.
And it had even scarier potential: the researchers were trying to "improve" the program to include information about all past crimes, both felonies and misdemeanors, family, work, salary, even reviews others had written about the person. It was absolutely terrifying, like allowing anyone with any sort of internet connection to google your most private, protected information.
As about two dozen people were standing up to walk out of the church in protest (myself included), I woke up.
And I realized that this dream was disturbingly similar to SixthSense technology, here, particularly the small section from 8:17-8:25. They really play that part down, but this seriously has the potential to ruin thousands, millions of lives.
I dreamed I was at my parents' church, singing with the choir for a Christmas celebration. My parents couldn't go for some reason, nor could any of my siblings, but I really wanted to go so I had walked there (my parents' church is about four miles away from my parents' home).
I got there a couple minutes late, but Mass hadn't started yet. They were taping the celebration, so the simultaneous video of the choir was showing up on a screen next to the altar area.
But it wasn't just video and sound. There were also these weird little bubbles floating next to about four people's heads, like pop-up bubbles that show up on certain TV shows and YouTube when they want you to know something extra about the people or events.
The information that the video showed was: gender, age, height, weight, diseases that the person had, and whether or not the woman was having her period. The three women displayed were all having their period, and the man had some latent venereal disease that he had gotten many many years ago (the man was about 65 or 70).
Obviously, the people whose information was being displayed were very disturbed, and the rest of us were pretty bothered by it too. So we all tried to start singing the opening hymn, but it was pretty weak and we were all sort of singing at different times.
So finally someone spoke up. I don't remember if it was me or someone else, but someone spoke up and asked our priest what it was.
He apologized, saying there was some new laws about technology, and that the congregation had voted to use the technology to see if there were any people with diseases in the congregation, especially venereal diseases, so that they could protect themselves properly.
The priest went on to say that he was personally against the law and the technology itself but the law's influence was so strong that he couldn't fight it. He said it was being led by a group of researchers around the world (he showed us a map of the world highlighted with thousands of white dots, mostly swathed over Africa, and said that every white dot was a researcher). He told us that only a very few researchers actually did research, and that most of them were in charge of suppressing any laws that would interfere with researching, collecting, and displaying information.
In Africa, collecting information was easy, as their were few laws in most countries regulating it. In America, it was harder, but the researchers got around it by posting "disclosure allowances" as part of health care and health insurance websites. Anyone who clicked on a link that said something like, "want to know more about your health?" signed themselves up for the program. Most younger computer users knew how to avoid this, since most of us are very good at avoiding spam and pop-up ads, but the late-middle-aged computer users who accidentally clicked once, were forever signed up for the research program.
And people wanted to know about other people. Of course, those who voted in favor of it thought to themselves, well, I will never sign up for the program myself, but I want to know about other people and their health secrets.
The priest explained it to us, how the laws argued that it was participants' own fault in two ways, once by getting the disease, and once by signing up for the program.
Of course it was obvious that people had been tricked and misled, but the laws and politics behind the movement were so strong that our priest felt powerless to fight it.
And it had even scarier potential: the researchers were trying to "improve" the program to include information about all past crimes, both felonies and misdemeanors, family, work, salary, even reviews others had written about the person. It was absolutely terrifying, like allowing anyone with any sort of internet connection to google your most private, protected information.
As about two dozen people were standing up to walk out of the church in protest (myself included), I woke up.
And I realized that this dream was disturbingly similar to SixthSense technology, here, particularly the small section from 8:17-8:25. They really play that part down, but this seriously has the potential to ruin thousands, millions of lives.