Turn Off, Tune Out and Drop In...

[strat_o_bastard]

I don't know the exact statistic, or whether reliable statistics even exist, but I've heard guestimations between 30 and 300, for the number of times per day the average person is visible by CCTV. This is a little worrying in general. For a while I've had the idea of spending a day, as ordinary as possible, avoiding CCTV; on campus, in shops, at

Comments

[hatebox]

It's an interesting idea. I used to have a lot of these conversations with the guy I went traveling with. Because cash machines and debit card usuage has such a grossly high commission abroad we would usually take out a lot money every few weeks. I'd say in India we were 'off the radar' for at least 3-4 weeks, as using phones or the internet was too much hassle and US dollars go really far there. Must have had long stretches in New Zealand too, the car wasn't even registered in our name. In hindsight it's quite a cool feeling, I recommend it.

Humans are odd things. They have an inherent need to both conform (we like to feel a part a of our race) and also be recognised as individuals and for our achievements.(which is why communism is always doomed, ultimately.) Still, if you go through with this experiment I commend you.

[esoteroticist]

ID cards. Yes or no?

[strat_o_bastard]

Being charged for the privelidge of the government having a quick and easy way of linking together all my personal details? Splendid!

I think it's in Mostly Harmless, but may be one of the earlier HHGG books, where Ford hacks into the Guide's databases by stealing the editor's ID card. It had been decided that all the tedious fingerprint scanning, retina-photographing and DNA testing could be bypassed by holding all that information on one convenient card...

[loveandlithium]

It's for reasons and such as these (and no others, I swear) that I'm always doing the odd little thing here and there to *bring about* the nuclear apocalypse rather than avert it. Post-fallout society would be so... free and, in some indefinable sense, real.

[strat_o_bastard]

"In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway..."

I feel impossibly unable to change anything universally on even a minor scale, at this point down a bottle of wine I'm content to change things personally.

Also it all depends on whether you survive nuclear winter as well. I guess the whole point of it is to create nuclear winter for the sake of the survivors, but looking at modern society, I doubt they'd be at all grateful.

[chazooka114]

For some reason this post reminds me of the time when Daniel, Taylor and I got lost near Venice. On our late night train ride back to the hostel, we got off a stop too early. Unfortunately, it was the last train into town. We decided to walk back to town on foot. I don't know why, but it's one of the more vivid memories of that trip that sticks out. We were in the middle of nowhere between to points of civilization, but there was nothing at all around us except silence, trees, and train tracks.

I agree with J-matt. It's funny how reliant we all are on systems. Any small sort of rebellion against them makes you feel a little more alive.

[strat_o_bastard]

I got lost in Venice with my family. A night-time stroll turned into a march around the old walled navy dockyard, on a metal walkway shoddily fixed into the wall, suspended about 20 feet above the lagoon, with noone else for miles. Good times.