I agree with you on some counts, including the last one. But I see this more as simply a sort of new kind of encyclopedia, and it aggregates info/images already available - it's not asking people to go create a database of new images. But even if it DID, it's not like Tron, or something, where these things will actually disappear and become part of CPU's non-existant "metaverse." Also, at the risk of sounding completely elitist, this is a great tool for those who can use it, and if the virutal world supplants the real world for the idiots who can't tell or handle the difference, then that's their problem. I've been to Notre Dame, and guess what? It's still there. But cities all over ARE disappearing and being supplanted by the Disney/Whole Foods version, and it's been going on for 20 years, and it's got nothing to do with this technology that seems to me to finally be a pretty good realization of "the web's" capabilities for merging image and text, individual knowledge and collective knowledge, and providing a path through that knowledge that is much more in line with the non-linear way that we, as humans, tend to think.
I don't think this is life changing, but I've been defending it so strongly because I think that the criticism so far has been way overblown - fer cryin' out loud - EZPass is more frighteneing, surveillance-wise, than this sort of thing is to me (there's already been a Law & Order episode where EZPass records were subpoenaed - the guy was a jerk and deserved to go down, but still...), though for the record, I have no problem using it, as I just assume that if there's a reason that someone wants to find me or find out what I've been (or anyone's been) doing, there are a million ways to do it, and I'm sure it'd be no problem with or without EZPass and the internet, first of all, and second, society may or may not have been going down the terlett for a long time, but misuse of the potentials of internet technology is just a symptom that, like many other symptoms, may hasten our demise, but is not the bugaboo it's made out to be.
I mean, the list of worrisome problems with the world sprawls, to the extent that, in my version, this isn't even on it.
And Jasongrote - you read Baudrillard - you got nothin' to fear from Debord!
Yeah, and there was the criminal who was convicted when his Metrocard belied his alibi, too. I think that recent events in places like Burma or Jena, Louisiana, have demonstrated that the state doesn't need cool gadgets when the old ways - like firing live ammo into crowd, or Jim Crow-style law enforcement - will do just fine.
My real feeling with this is that both the techno-utopians and the doomsayers are acting out a kind of sci-fi fantasy, and as a lifelong sci-fi/comic nerd myself, I totally get it, in both directions. But I really think that, when anything is gained, something else is lost, and it's important to acknowledge that, even when whatever is being lost (or gained) isn't that big a deal. So totalitarian or democratic governments (or marketers, potential employers, stalkers, or curious friends) don't need technology to do what they do - I buy that. I also buy that the massive collective brain on the internet have provided an amazing resource in the way of knowledge, communication and fun. And it's worth adding that, despite any reservations I might have, I've willingly, eagerly, handed over a huge chunk of personal info to Google, MySpace, Flickr, and so on and so forth. And a big part of me loves to obsessively index certain trivial parts of my life (though I really wish I could be as attentive to my finances as I was to, say, iTunes).
I found out earlier this year that I was surveilled, mostly online, by the NYPD during the Republican convention. It wasn't me they were after, specifically - but I did a lot of emailing and blogging and alt-journalism at that time, and they mined what I posted for information. This doesn't bother me so much, as everything they looked at was meant to be public and the cops are part of the public, too. But on the other hand, they disappeared a buddy of mine for the duration of the convention to get him out of the way. He's a social worker with a wife and daughter, and they showed up at his workplace, held him for as long as they could, and released him with a token charge. Now, they probably didn't need the internet to track him down, but I'm sure it helped. In the end it was no big deal, because we do still live in a democracy and he was (and is) an educated middle-class white guy. And you'd be right to say that the undoing of habeas corpus and the use of torture is a much bigger deal than search aggregators that can connect every activity we do. But, all of that said, I think it's right to feel uneasy about the indexing of absolutely everything, even as I actively participate in it and enjoy it.
So, yes, TED is very cool, and of course it's silly to blame it for all of the problems of late capitalism etc. And I think I find Baudrillard's take on it more interesting than Debord's, because Baudrillard probably would have said that the society of the spectacle, combined with the actual destruction of real landmarks by redevelopment or catastrophe or war/terror, marks the realization of a very, very old human impulse - that is, the replacement of the fixed and physical with the mutable and virtual - a notion that goes back to the ancient Greek philosophers, Buddhist thought, probably St. Augustine and others. Again, cool because, well, it's cool - I think it's a mistake for progressives to abandon the language of fantasy and fetishize the "real world" - but also, not cool, because the more activated and tangible a virtual world is, the less we're likely to notice the unraveling of our physical environments and communities. He says as he types a ridiculously long-winded treatise on a message board, avoiding working on creating a fake NY Times page as part of an alternate reality game based on his Arabian Nights play.
I should revisit Debord. It was one of the first heavy theory books I ever read, so I was probably in way over my head at the time.
