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Are we living in 1984?
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GlennSprigg:

--- Quote from: Halcyon on December 28, 2020, 05:08:06 am ---As a "faggot" I actually love Dire Straits. Grew up with it. (Maybe there was some suppressed homosexuality there?) ;-)

Seriously though, in that song, I don't think "faggot" referred to gay people. It would be like someone in Australia calling someone a "dickhead". It can be taken positively as well as negatively. My best friend is fondly referred to as "DH" in correspondence.

--- End quote ---

I've always understood/believed that the original word 'faggot' referred to a bunch of sticks to use in a fire!  :o
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: I wanted a rude username on December 28, 2020, 07:30:27 am ---Not an agenda so much as companies want to monetise information, and they can't monetise what they don't have. Facebook could have been designed like the later Diaspora, but its founding doesn't seem to have been motivated by privacy ... quite the opposite.

You are right that centralisation makes it easier to control the flow of lies, and harmful memes such as Da'ish. However, when the majority (or even a strident minority) holds a certain point of view to be a lie ... even though it is true ... this centralised control becomes censorship.

We are in a weird moment of both great freedom of information, and increasingly effective means to control it. That control is tightening much faster on the Facebooks and YouTubes than on the EEVblogs and 4chans.

--- End quote ---

Makes sense.

And yes the moment is very weird regarding information. Information has never been as profuse and easy to access, yet it's also becoming increasingly easy to mislead people (at all levels) and pass truth for lies, and lies for truth.

That said, whether there is an actual "agenda" or not doesn't matter in the end, if the end result is the same.
VK3DRB:
If Bob Dylan lived in a certain country and wrote Masters of War today, he would be arrested for "spreading rumours" and be given 20 years in a "vocational training centre". These days the weapon of choice is "1984" technology. It is used for extensively for surveillance, lying, brainwashing, concealing the truth - to control of the masses. Tyrants such as Hitler, Mao, Leopold or Stalin could have done their evil deeds far more efficiently in a cashless society where everyone is ID'ed and monitored.

A few years ago, an ex-colleague of mine was running a major IT company in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe stole all the money out of my friend's company and private bank accounts (he is white), sending my ex-colleague immediately broke and out of business. He and his family were forced to flee Zimbabwe. Mugabe's theft was done easily and digitally - a press of a few buttons on a keyboard. This could happen to anyone who is considered by a tyrannical regime to be "an enemy of the state".

1984 has arrived.
themadhippy:
faggots when served with  mashed spuds and peas is a very tasty meal.
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: VK3DRB on January 02, 2021, 10:53:09 am ---Tyrants such as Hitler, Mao, Leopold or Stalin could have done their evil deeds far more efficiently in a cashless society where everyone is ID'ed and monitored.

--- End quote ---

For sure, those dictators would only have dreamt of current technology (and its widespread use), and would have been able to do much more. We now have everything at disposal for an almost perfect dictatorship. And yet, we seem to believe human societies have become so wise and ethical that they will never use all those tools for such nasty endeavors. Everyone, of course, is free to believe in whatever they like.
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