Re: <nettime> Comment on Paul Miller's Entertainment Nation

[John Young <jya@pipeline.com>]

While already a commonplace conventional gadget for TSA-pre-approved
road warriors and women hammering at the reinforced glass ceiling
suppressor, it is likely the cellphone will grow as the weapon of choice 
for youngsters hoping to escape being the oppressive tools of their 
ambitious parents and, no offense intended, their dedicated teachers
expected to do what parents have no time or skill for -- prepare the
kids for subservience or for a few to be enforcers of subservience.

Cellphones being banned in schools, in many workplaces, and especially
in havens of secrets, show how much they threaten controlled environments. 
While computers are being force-fed to students and workers, cellphones 
free them from the machines of control, no matter that the operators of 
wireless networks control the cellphones in the background as mainframes 
once also worked their data-amassing devilry out of sight.

The PC had a short life as a liberator, and as might have been expected
those most expert in PC manufacture, marketing and education, didn't
resist the irresistable temptation to cash in on the readily dispensed
trust of machines which appeared to be under the individual's control,
and were if you could afford the pricey gadgets -- until hooked up the 
Internet, then loss of control followed instantaneously although there 
were fabulous promises of the empowerment of interconnectivity
and few warnings of the easy of gathering of information on users.

All the while the background technology, finance, law and politics
welcomed another illusion of consumer-citizen control of communication
and discourse, ready to wire-tapped, surveiled, banned and ridiculed
whenever it went too far.

Cellphone wizards will appear presumably who will show how to 
violently misuse the toys meant to infantilize to counter the computer 
liberation geeks who have grown comfortable as mature adults with 
payola for advice on homeland surveillance and sagacity dispensing 
shopworn promises of the subservient, treacherous Internet.

And so it went with freedom of the press, of religion, of the right
to elect government officeholders, of a nation of laws. Apologias
for these thuggeries is a surefire invitation to the club.


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