A few more thoughts on the massive NSA database of every domestic phone call, ever, in the United States... The database actualizes what was once only theory: DARPA's defunct Total Information Awareness project, which sought to "counter asymmetric threats [i.e. terrorism] by achieving total information awareness." Awareness of everything, godlike omniscience. Is this the only… Continue reading Total Information Awareness, Reprise
Tag: DARPA
Story-Space-Surveillance Triangle
My posting the other day about DARPA's now-defunct Total Information Awareness project inspired me to rethink a New Media course I've been designing, using the concept of TIA as one of the three themes for the course. The technology that DARPA proposed in its Total Information Awareness program is an example of what Laura Marks… Continue reading Story-Space-Surveillance Triangle
Synchronicity
Twenty years after the Police's Synchronicity, the word finally seems to have entered everyday language. One of UPS's new slogans, which I just saw on the side of a brown truck in Philadelphia, is now "Synchronizing the World of Commerce." I know what "synchronizing" means, I guess, but what does that slogan mean? Why does… Continue reading Synchronicity