The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme, 2007-2036 has dozens of rather disturbing moments. I strongly urge everyone to read it in full. Its view of what awaits us in the near future is truly dystopian.
We have brain-chip mind control:
By 2035, an implantable information chip could be developed and wired directly to the user’s brain. Information and entertainment choices would be accessible through cognition and might include synthetic sensory perception beamed direct to the user’s senses. Wider related ICT developments might include the invention of synthetic telepathy, including mind-to mind or telepathic dialogue. This type of development would have obvious military and security, as well as control, legal and ethical, implications.
We have genetically modified Ãœbermenschen. Khhhaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn!!!!!!!
The application of advanced genetics could challenge current assumptions about human nature and existence. Initially employed for medical purposes, breakthroughs in these areas could be put to ethically questionable uses, such as the super enhancement of human attributes, including physical strength and sensory perception. Extreme variation in attributes could arise between individuals, or where enhancement becomes a matter of fashion, between societies, creating additional reasons for conflict.
Lou Dobbs turns out to have been right all along:
A growing Hispanic population in the US might lead to increasing social tensions, possibly resulting in an aggressive separatist movement. Unlike the Black Power militants of the 1960s, this movement might focus on geographically-based self-determination as its aim, threatening secession by Hispanic-majority states. Confronted by this threat, the US might become increasingly introspective, withdrawing from all non-essential overseas commitments. In the wider world, other states and non-state actors could take advantage of the US withdrawal or break-up, using violence to pursue objectives that, otherwise, might have provoked a US military response.
Security cameras with the voices of children are just the beginning:
Technology will enable pervasive surveillance in response to terrorism, rising transnational crime and the growing capability of disparate groups or individuals to inflict catastrophic damage or disruption. Coupled with intrusive, highly responsive and accessible data-bases, the emergence of a so-called ‘surveillance society’ will increasingly challenge assumptions about privacy, with corresponding impacts on civil liberties and human rights. These capabilities will be deployed by the private as well as the public sector.
Thats all just the tip of a very scary iceberg. I might grab a few more choice cuts later.
From the BBC.
The new US director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, has made an appearance in public at a convention – a relatively rare thing for someone in that job to do, reports the BBC’s Security Correspondent Frank Gardner.
Every morning, six days a week, he goes to the White House to brief the president. So what keeps him awake at night?
“If someone were to have a sophisticated attack on our financial services system, let’s just say cyber network broadly, at the same time that they mailed, through the US mail, FedEx and UPI, the equivalent of letters sprinkled with anthrax, it would have a devastating impact,” Mr McConnell says.
“If they chose the right place, right time, right season, it would have an even more overwhelming devastating impact.”
This has been another edition of “Mike’s Top Terrorism Tips.”.
I haven’t touched this blog for a while. Got a bit sidetracked by Livejournal, and life. I came back to find 1250 comments waiting, every single one of them spam!
Comments only appear if I approve them, spammers, so don’t waste your time and mine! Of course, it’s probably all automated, but seriously, who the hell ever bought viagra from a spam comment on a blog?
This is an old old thing I wrote in the early days of UO. It’s a write-up of an ingame event I was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time for!
A rambling (and true!) account by Arkenor of Britain.
I had awakened early that morn. My arcane studies had been halted by the lack of reagents in the shops I frequent. This no doubt due to the bacon-fed coves who purchase in bulk only to sell at marked up prices from their stalls. It had occurred to me, while falling into Morpheus’ grasp the night before, that the old mage who lived in the secret valley nearby might be able to provide what I needed.
Continue reading The Battle of Trinsic
From the BBC
The All England Club has denied press reports that a “drunken” David Hasselhoff had to be removed from the Wimbledon tennis championships.
One day I want to be so famous that when I get drunk, people have to put it in quotation marks.
The Green Lodge took our first trip to Redwillow last night, and we were most impressed by it. Not least because of the sheer number of chests we found! It’s nice to come out in profit. We met our first giants. Meeting a new monster is always a cause for excitement for us, and we were right glad that half of us were dwarves.
While searching for a lever to open a chest I couldn’t pick, poor Jorreck, bane of all poisons, got solidly stuck behing a rock and had to recall. Later, when turning in the items we were questing for, we had a horrible time. We couldn’t find the research scrolls that we had most definitely picked up (but we weren’t sure by who), and so couldn’t continue with the quest. We must have spent 20 minutes searching for them, and poking the NPC. Finally our ingenious bard, Flere, realised that they must have been left behind the rock when Jorreck recalled out, and of course no-one had looked behind there for fear of getting stuck.
So hurrah, we managed to continue. It made me think about how quick we are to label things bugs, when sometimes it’s just misfortune, or not knowing (forgetting in our case) how the game-world works. Of course, getting stuck behind things (though thats the only time we can remember it happening), and chests that are unopenable, really are bugs.
We shall be returning, I am sure of that. While looking for details on the chest we couldn’t open I came upon a list of the rare loot that can be found in Redwillow, and I think we can find homes for all of it.
Been a busy week. After the DnL debacle, I was still thirsting for a world based MMORPG to supplement DDO.
I was persuaded by some good friends on the DDO irc channel to give the new Everquest progression server a try. It’s a new sort of server, where each everquest expansion has to be unlocked by the players, usually by someone raiding the nastiest enemies of the previous expansion.
What I found out: That I have no idea why I ever found it fun. It’s ugly, laggy, and as for corpse runs, well, I don’t know why we ever put up with that nonsense. I just find myself getting horribly bored. I will persevere for now though.
Seeing as I was going to break my vow of never touching another SOE game (They keep buying everyone else anyway. At this rate I’d never play a MMORPG again.), I figured I might as well go for the Access account option, and have a little poke around EQ2. The game has changed a great deal since April 2005 when I quit, and I found I had no idea how to play my existing characters, at least not without doing grave harm to their kills to deaths ratio.
So I decided to start a new character on the newest servers. These happened to be PvP ones, but I figured, hey, it’ll make being a questaholic more challenging.
What I found out: That non-consensual PvP sucks horribly. If I step out into Antonica, within a minute I’ll be dead from some stealther sneak-attacking me. Given the feebleness of my reaction times, and my utter lack of killer instinct, this is not going to be a long lived experience. Nevertheless, until I stepped out into Antonica, I was having fun, so I shall keep my eyes open for a fresh regular server being opened. That seems pretty rare though, unfortunately. A shame, as there is nothing like the delicious taste of a clean start. Til then, my much mistreated Access acount will be put back into it’s state of suspended animation. Probably. Unless I get really bored.
I am anticipating DDO’s Module 2 with something akin to the feeling I get when someone waves a bag of pork scratchings before me (Sadly an all-too uncommon event). If QA clear it in time, it’ll be this week.
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