Friday, August 17, 2012

Dystopia by definition

Dystopia is a word that's thrown around a lot lately. The word, by definition, means:

"A society characterized by human misery, as squalor, oppression, disease, and overcrowding."


Which brings me to this video that attempts to convey dystopia through many forms of media; multimedia if you will. I think this video is interesting (but not as interesting as their slow-motion flying dogs). I think they went for a far simpler definition of what dystopia was to them (mostly over-population) my personal view is that our society is nearing the zenith of what I see as dystopia. Already, far too many people know far too much about you simply through using their services; whether directly or indirectly.

I had an interesting experience recently:
I've recently been on the lookout for a new laptop over the last few weeks, I was surprised when I started receiving emails from Amazon about cool laptops that were on sale. Without prompting by me, they knew that I was a likely candidate for a new laptop and, therefore, they were proactive in ensuring that I knew all about their clunky low-res laptops (I'll refrain from getting on my soapbox this time) . A little scary, sure. And all of this came about because I had decided to browse a few laptops on their site while logged into their system. Apparently every website that utilises facebook integration automatically collects information about your browsing habits irrespective of whether you actually click or comment via their facebook integration. They collect information just by you going to that page (while remaining logged into facebook). Unless you choose not to be very social, they are guaranteed to know quite a bit about you (even if all they're able to trace is your unique IP address).

bonus points if you know what this is from :)
Scary, indeed, but that's the price you pay for living in the information age.

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