Cameras Everywhere

Lately the mass deployment of cameras has gotten ridiculous.

And it's an insistent, aggressive, maniacal attitude of deployment wrapped up in a bit of mystery and cluelessness and probably backed up by unlimited funding.

I mean, EVERY intersection in my portion of the Phoenix metropolitan area has cameras.

TWO types of cameras:  

    Line of site cameras on the traffic light poles and fish-eye cameras at the street corners.

You ask the cops who is watching these cameras and they answer "what cameras?"

I don't know if they are really that ignorant or are pretending to be.

Finally the answer "Nobody is watching those cameras".

The answer I finally yanked out was that these 'cameras' only perceive traffic to modify the function of the traffic signals...they don't actually see anything!

What about the fish-eye cameras?

After being asked what I am talking about, I got tired of dealing with these idiots.

I started asking my neighbors.

Same response: "What cameras?"

Are you kidding me?

The population IS really THAT clueless - they have no perception of the environment, or even of reality itself.

What's happening?

Too difficult to raise your  head from the SmartPhone screen to see what's up?

OLIVE GARDEN

I go to Olive Garden, and am told I am supposed to order my meal from these touch screen devices sitting on my table.

Unlike most people, I am curious, I like to observe and look at things.

What do I see inside this obnoxious device but a mini CAMERA looking back at me.

When I ask the waitress what a CAMERA is doing in my 'ordering device' she has no clue.

OFFICE MAX

I was surprised how accommodating the local Office Max cashier was when offering to special order an item the store did not have.

I gave up the relevant information when the dude takes out what looks like a large calculator and starts pressing buttons on  it to complete the order.

Looking down at this thing I notice there is a miniature CAMERA looking right up my nose.

I tell the guy there is a camera in the calculator thing looking up my nose and I want to know why!

No response.

I say, EXCUSE ME, I just made a statement to you in plain English!

(see stuff like this is what frightens people nowadays - asking questions)

The guy has no response, but calls the manager.

After hemming and hawing, the manager finally confirms to me it is some sort of 'client confirmation' method.

All these cameras are being shoved up my face and up my nose with no formal declaration, no information and without permission.

You know what SCREW these stupid, clueless people...and their cameras!

Lately, while being checked out by a cashier at a supermarket, I notice there were cameras at foot-level.

I asked what was up.

The cashier said they were there to catch and charge people for items being carried in the wheel-level basket of a shopping cart.

Gee, that makes sense!  

How about just looking under each shopping cart.

I play a little with the line-of-sight of the cameras and sure enough....

I find it is making 'lens contact' with my face from foot level, literally filming RIGHT UP MY NOSE!

Fast forward.

I walk up to the window of my local bank, and a bank teller I have never seen before in my life greets me by my first name.

I ask her how she knows my name? 

Here answer is "I remember you."

Sure you do, honey, but that's a bit hard considering we have never met.

Then I see the way she keeps looking at the screen and seems rather entertained.

Then I remember. 

I am carrying my 'SMART' Credit Cards and Debit Cards - you know, the ones with the active transmitting microchip embedded in the card.

The cards identified me to the cashier as soon as I approached the teller window!

And I know better than to argue with a teller at a keyboard...

....considering she is typing EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING INTO THE RECORD.

 So I am trying to deal with new reality of being constantly spied upon, checked upon and even betrayed by what amounts to spy devices all over the environment.

 As I begin looking into this reality, I find out things are worse than I thought.

I find out Samsung televisions have cameras in which WATCH you.

Cable or Satellite TV boxes have cameras watching you.

I come to find out the latest X-Box One video game console has an infrared camera that can see through clothing, and even into neighboring rooms

Excuse me?!

Is this the crazy train or what!

They are even making fridges with cameras and sensors recording who takes what.

Ad posters in supermarkets have cameras in them filming customer behavior and even which way the customers' EYES wander while scanning the merchandise.

What sort of freak show is this?

Its common knowledge that cameras now have 'facial recognition' or the ability to IDENTIFY you just by scanning your face?

Where is the reference databank?

Try your latest Department of Motor Vehicles Driver's License digital photo, specifically designed to create a facial recognition grid of your face...to which these cameras - the traffic cameras out there on the street - have access.

These cameras also have the ability to read your car's license plate, knowing therefore, not only what car it is, but who's driving it...and where it's going!

My only question is, when did life become a freaking Habitrail?

Some sore of transparent cage where us hamster-like humans pretend to live out our lives in pretend privacy and make-believe sovereignty.

All I know is I next time I am asked for my VIP Customer Card I will take great pleasure in telling them "Not only do I NOT have one, but I will NEVER have one and people like you will never know who the fuck I am!"










 

We Are Becoming Techno-Slaves

I was watching a documentary on the Internet sales giant Amazon the other day and got to see just how this corporation drives its workers, with technology.

AMAZON

First of all, an Amazon warehouse consists of floor after floor of items in closely packed bins.

Secondly, a worker has to run briskly (almost at a run) to each of these bins, load the items into a giant car, register them with a scanner, run the cart back down to a shipping area and unload and label the items.

Work enough.

But the unsettling part is the worker’s location is ‘tracked’ at all times.

His speed between orders is ‘tracked’ at all times.

His ‘time’ is ‘tracked’ at all times, and a disturbing alarm goes off in his input device if he is ‘falling behind.’

Imagine eight non-stop hours of this.

In other words, the typical Amazon employee is put to work under conditions of extreme duress...a condition created, maintained and supervised by technology.

TACO BELL

I was looking over the shoulder of the Taco Bell ‘server’ at the drive-through window and noticed there were four clocks running on a screen over his head.

Three of the clocks (which were counting down the SECONDS) were green, one was red.

I asked the worker if he was being timed and he said ‘yes.’

Further inquiry into this ‘timing’ of Taco Bell workers led to the discovery that they are being ‘tracked’ and ‘timed’ and all this information is being ‘stored.’

That’s right, each employee’s ‘record’ contains a list of his or her ‘time’ in completing customer orders.

This ‘record’ not only accompanies the employee throughout his ‘career’ (if you can call it that), but plays a prominent role in deciding who gets fired.

How’s that for stressful?

Time is money, right?

What ingenious “corporate manager” came up with all these human slave tracking and whipping ideas.

Technology is being used to slave drive the underpaid employee into the ground!

WHITE COLLAR WORLD

I was talking to some fellow white collar employees of various sorts, and was surprised to discover ‘tracking’ and ‘recording’ was also happening on their end of the economic sphere.

Believe it or not, cameras are now being installed inside work cubicles.

Computers track and record all employee activity, especially when it comes to ‘production.’

All phone conversations are recorded and filed.

Bosses are TIMING employee breaks to the coffee room and to the BATHROOM...all this being recored on the employee’s record, of course.

SLAVE TEACHERS

Meanwhile, a friend who is a teacher has now told me the ‘new’ classroom is run like production line.

There is a CAMERA in the classroom to which the principal apparently has real time access at any time.

Furthermore, this camera is not only records, but ‘files’ the activities of each day.

The poor teacher has not only to keep an eye on the camera, but on his watch because there is a certain thing he must be teaching at a certain time during each day.

He is told what to teach, when to teach it and how to teach it.

To make everything run smooth, there is a ‘commissar’ that busts in at random moments to make sure he is ‘on schedule.’

I am sure technology will soon replace this commissar with something even more real time and more ominous.

Cameras in the bathrooms?

Of course!

It helps cut down on vandalism.

Any sense of human privacy, human dignity or human rights seems to have apparently gone down the oblivion toilet.

Results! That’s what matters.

I can only speculate about all the damaged, mismanaged, lost items and orders created by this ‘time and whip’ system of hi-tech management.

The new ‘ingenious’ corporate corporate culture of timed pressure is, of course, a formula for error.

As to the teacher, it is obvious that reading from a timed script is a formula for a crud education

But of course...the road to hell is always paved with good intentions....and optimistic production quotas.

THE FUTURE

I don’t have to use much imagination to see that many of the ‘jobs’ now filled by hapless employees like those at Amazon, Taco Bell and corporate offices will soon be filled by robots.

And that in the meantime, the human employee will be run ragged into the ground by robotic technology.

To cope with this, the ‘human’ employee will require new types of electronic and medical intervention to help him or her deal with the new demanding environment.

Whether it be pills or some sort of electronic implants, these desperate, depressed, hopeless and underpaid creatures will JUMP at the chance of any enhancements (see previous article) which will help them accommodate themselves to the new standard.

CONCLUSION

We are being abused by technology.

In the process, we are being electronically ‘whipped’ and pressured like slaves to accomplish ever increasing quotas of inhuman production.

This is not normal.

The corporate masters need to get a grip...before the population takes things in its own hands...terminates illegal immigration...ends Chinese imports...cuts corporate subsidies...and starts assembling their own more logical and more humane concept of what an economy and a work environment should look like.