Practicalmadness

Howard Bloom ("a paleopsychologist and the author of Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind", not to be confused with the literary critic Harold Bloom) has written an article for Wired Magazine that I think I can summarize thusly: "so what if Total Information Awareness will annihilate the civil liberties of every American? When the technology goes public, it'll create a web search engine a thousand times more powerful than Google!"

Tracking terrorists is just a pretext for getting the best computer scientists at Darpa to create what we all really want: a general-purpose IQ expansion pack capable of plowing through the built-in barriers of central nervous system-based software. It will show us whole new ways to look at what we're up against - whether it's bin Laden, a demanding boss, or that damn lost phone number.

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