I sat, last night, above the access path I had cut into the hillside, on the firing platform that overlooks the head of the valley. At 6,500 feet perspective expands. Next to me sat the Man in the High Castle, gun in hand, having just shot a rattlesnake. This man, on his high, hard land, thinks much of intrusion and as I sat exhausted from cutting a drainage ditch above, I hoped he didn’t require a rifle pit. At our feet grumbled Cowboy, an Australian shepherd dog who is ever scanning the valley floor and rising cuts for intruders.

As I drank cheap wine and he sipped expensive whiskey, he spoke on tire chipping, the fact that tire manufacturers, who ship tires to dealers on commission, put tracking chips in their product and do not disable the chips at the point of sale. This angered this man of gruff wisdom and we discussed the countermeasures he had found in an article. But I, as a pedestrian, was more curious about the meaning behind the reality that tire manufacturers are going to soon be in possession of a database detailing the movements of most motorists.

As a crackpot I would like to think this is the result of some grand conspiracy to track our miniature migratory habits.

But upon reflection, such private sector efforts to gather ever more information on citizens, and also the rampant censorship and job terminations of dissident speakers, is simply the logical culmination of our materialistic ethos. In a grow or die economy which denies the natural life cycles of human societies, every single manufacturer of any item, even food, would be well served to have that item chipped and tracked, provided the technology was cheap enough, in order to better understand, target and serve the needs of the consumer.

So, in the future, I imagine a world where your purchase of cars, guns, ammunition, books, footwear, Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas hams, beer kegs and high end spirits and wines will all be tracked to the point of sale and beyond, to the transportation and date and place of use or consumption. In such a world these private records will be accessed by government agencies just like dental records are accessed to identify unknown bodies. But the governmental systems of that great organism, the State, that monster that makes of every voter a Doctor Frankenstein, and ultimately the global corporations of control, continue to evolve, and as they do so, these living systems, in which people increasingly serve as brain cells, will care ever less for control of our bodies and evermore for control of our minds.

What Drives Comprehensive Intrusion?

I sat, last night, above the access path I had cut into the hillside, on the firing platform that overlooks the head of the valley. At 6,500 feet perspective expands. Next to me sat the Man in the High Castle, gun in hand, having just shot a rattlesnake. This man, on his high, hard land, thinks much of intrusion and as I sat exhausted from cutting a drainage ditch above, I hoped he didn’t require a rifle pit. At our feet grumbled Cowboy, an Australian shepherd dog who is ever scanning the valley floor and rising cuts for intruders.

As I drank cheap wine and he sipped expensive whiskey, he spoke on tire chipping, the fact that tire manufacturers, who ship tires to dealers on commission, put tracking chips in their product and do not disable the chips at the point of sale. This angered this man of gruff wisdom and we discussed the countermeasures he had found in an article. But I, as a pedestrian, was more curious about the meaning behind the reality that tire manufacturers are going to soon be in possession of a database detailing the movements of most motorists.

As a crackpot I would like to think this is the result of some grand conspiracy to track our miniature migratory habits.

But upon reflection, such private sector efforts to gather ever more information on citizens, and also the rampant censorship and job terminations of dissident speakers, is simply the logical culmination of our materialistic ethos. In a grow or die economy which denies the natural life cycles of human societies, every single manufacturer of any item, even food, would be well served to have that item chipped and tracked, provided the technology was cheap enough, in order to better understand, target and serve the needs of the consumer.

So, in the future, I imagine a world where your purchase of cars, guns, ammunition, books, footwear, Thanksgiving turkeys, Christmas hams, beer kegs and high end spirits and wines will all be tracked to the point of sale and beyond, to the transportation and date and place of use or consumption. In such a world these private records will be accessed by government agencies just like dental records are accessed to identify unknown bodies. But the governmental systems of that great organism, the State, that monster that makes of every voter a Doctor Frankenstein, and ultimately the global corporations of control, continue to evolve, and as they do so, these living systems, in which people increasingly serve as brain cells, will care ever less for control of our bodies and evermore for control of our minds.

About gathering data on consumption-you are right-it's driven primarily by commercial incentives. If I know who buys my products, when and for what, I can make my supply chain more efficient, making sure that the right quantities are produced and transported to the right place at the right time. I can also optimize my marketing, making sure that I'm spending advertising dollars where they will bring results.

In business school, we were taught the story about how Target's advertising algorithms identified that a teenage girl was pregnant before her father knew, and started targeting her with the relevant ads. Well, nice story

The reality is that gathering data is easy, using it to support good decisions is very difficult. Here's an example-big companies spent billions of dollars on digital marketing, which turned out to have largely been wasted.

If computerized statistical analysis (machine learning) of big data sets is such a great tool for decision making, how could these companies, with almost unlimited resources, access to great computer scientists and statisticians, etc., fuck up so badly?

It's the same story since the big empires like Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and the Precolumbian ones. Gathering data, processing it and disseminating it is easy in big, organized societies. The bottleneck is in wisdom and creativity, both of which are naturally stifled/selected against in big organizations. On the flip side, individuals have almost unlimited access to wisdom and creativity, if they want it.

4) Right now, various government organizations have the same exact issue when it comes to surveillance and tracking. Actually, at a certain level, the corporate world and government don't have a real distinction. For this reason, I'm not worried about being tracked and targeted-unless I go out of my way to raise my profile, there is no reason for them to do so-no payoff, lots of other stuff to do with their bottlenecked resources. You really have to do a Gordon Kahl to make it worth their while. Back to point 1: if I could work effectively in Afghanistan, I can certainly do so in a modern informational landscape. The Taliban were a lot smarter and more aware than Western bureaucracy.

5) Not worried about mind control, either-most people are actively looking for someone to control what they've got passing for a mind. At the same time, any decent library/the internet have masses of uncensored information for anyone who wants it (a tiny minority.) Very basic mental sanitation techniques (for instance, not owning a tv) are very effective.

Sincerely,

Baruch

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