http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?021209ta_talk_hertzberg
December 12, 2002 | home
COMMENT
TOO MUCH INFORMATIONIssue of 2002-12-09
Posted 2002-12-02
When it comes to concocting fevered visions of the future as a way of
illuminating the present, Jules Verne got some things right in his
time, Aldous Huxley got others, and George Orwell got still others. In
our time--in this terror-haunted interlude (we hope) of background-hum
dread and well-founded paranoia--no literary divinator gets it righter
than the sci-fi pulp master Philip K. Dick, author of "Clans of the
Alphane Moon" and dozens of other books, and inspirer of some of
Hollywood's spookiest dystopias, including "Blade Runner," "Total
Recall," and "Minority Report." And this is odd, given that he has
been dead for twenty years. Too bad he's not still around. It would be
interesting to get his take on the Information Awareness Office of the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of
Defense.
The Information Awareness Office plays it so weird that one can't help
suspecting that somebody on its staff might be putting us on. The
Information Awareness Office's official seal features an occult
pyramid topped with mystic all-seeing eye, like the one on the dollar
bill. Its official motto is "Scientia Est Potentia," which doesn't
mean "science has a lot of potential." It means "knowledge is power."
And its official mission is to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate,
demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and
prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter
asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness."
[...]
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Received on Dec 13 2002
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