Well it’s been a while since I posted here, so I’m going to give a quick catch up before going onto say something profound or not as the case may be. I completed the contract with my previous employer around a week ago, the job actually ended up OK. The replacement was trained and is I think in the groove as they say, I’ve left my contact details behind and if they contact me for any reason before the memories grow dim I’ll help them out if I can.
What has happened in the mean time, well not much really. I’ve watched the gradual but increasing erosion of the individuals right to privacy, only yesterday the UK government has said it will dedicate increased resource to ensuring that communications between individuals suspected of terrorist involvement become less private. By implication that actually means that communication between everyone becomes less private, I’m not too unhappy about that as a long time ago I was told to never say anything by electronic means that I wouldn’t be prepared to shout across a crowded room. But one to watch and maybe have a rant about in the future. As everyone knows this is mostly a knee jerk reaction to recent events in France, I understand the reason behind the planned actions – but it doesn’t actually mean that I have to agree with it or like it!
We have moved so far in terms of technology in the last 20 years that it’s becoming uncomfortable for me and I work in the technology industry, around the early 2000’s I first heard the phrase “The Internet of Things” and it promised so much. But the phrase may be better reading “Things of the Internet”, we are likely to be increasingly uncomfortable with technology for the short-term anyway. At least until the fabric of society catches up with the values espoused by the leadership, those little things that we have allowed to be taken away a bit at a time will some day be seen as a significant shift in the attitude of society – one allowed by society because of a lack of understanding.
It may be that at some point in the future we’ll regain all the freedoms that we have given up over the years, but it’s much more likely that we won’t. There are people who will say that you have nothing to worry about if you’ve done nothing wrong, what I would say to them is that there are lots of things considered wrong now that were not wrong in recent history. It obviously works the other way round, it’s little compensation when something that you’ve been punished for is not a crime soon after you’ve been punished.