Technofascists v. the normies

Erudite Partner's latest article from TomDispatch opens with a vignette:

Sometime in the late 1980s, I was talking with a friend on my landline (the only kind of telephone we had then). We were discussing logistics for an upcoming demonstration against the Reagan administration’s support for the Contras fighting the elected government of Nicaragua. We agreed that, when our call was done, I’d call another friend, “Mary,” to update her on the plans. I hung up.

But before I could make the call, my phone rang.

“Hi, this is Mary,” my friend said.

“Mary! I was just about to call you.”

“But you did call me,” she said.

“No, I didn’t. My phone just rang, and you were on the other end.”

It was pretty creepy, but that was how surveillance worked in the days of wired telephone systems. Whoever was listening in, most likely someone from the local San Francisco Police Department, had inadvertently caused both lines to ring, while preparing to catch my coming conversation with Mary. ...

I remember this episode well. Our household was a part of organizing a lot of demonstrations against Ronald Reagan's Central American wars. The SFPD could have simply asked us what were the plans. Or they could have attended some of the interminable organizing coalition meetings; actually, I'm sure they did that ...

I walked over this on a San Francisco street

Anyway, that crude surveillance seems quaint these days. Authorities have gotten far more sophisticated and they've found some frightening allies -- or are these overlords? Today E.P. asks "How Will Your Data Be Deployed In an Age of Dark Enlightenment?"

It's pretty scary stuff full of tech billionaires and pseudo-intellectual elite fantasies come to life. How do we reject these lost, desiccated aspiring techno-gods? The same way that people of good will always have: by loving one another and supporting each other in our messy humanity. Read Erudite Parther's latest.