LoJack for People?! WTF!

No matter how many time you say it to yourself to help sleep at night, or how many times you have dismissed Saunders' MallCity as paranoid or simplistic, you have to look at this article he just sent with the comments "Then, they'll say that it needs to be a chip, so that it can't be lost or removed...then, we have Mallcity 14."

Because what we are raving about this evening my friends is from the company that gave us the anti theft device LoJack has ported the idea to people.

From the article in Natural News

• ...has developed an analogous system to track patients with Alzheimer's disease or other conditions that might lead them to become easily lost.
  
• LoJack SafetyNet consists of a Personal Locator Beacon wristband that gives off a radio signal capable of being detected even inside buildings, densely wooded forests or in the middle of large bodies of water. The signal can be detected by search-and-rescue teams with appropriate equipment at a range of one mile from the ground or five to seven miles from a helicopter.

Now if you will excuse me, I am going to bed and pulling the covers over my head...

Read more here

Comment: Scientists say we should demand drugs to make us better!

Shaun's MallCity mentality crawls a bit closer with this story from ABC News. Dr. Saunders contents that the first steps into the ultra consumerism / corporate controlled society is to create a need in the consumer, then convince them that it is their right to have whatever piece of tech or product that is being foisted off on them. We have seen the beginnings with rfid chipping. First government employees, then those that can not say no, followed by self serving security benefits. Pretty soon you're a malcontent by not accepting a chip.

Well here goes another variation: recently that Several scientists contended in a provocative commentary Healthy people should have the right to boost their brains with pills, like those prescribed for hyperactive kids or memory-impaired older folks. College students are already demanding and taking illegal prescription stimulants like Ritalin to help them study, and the demand for such drugs is growing.

Oh it gets better: "We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function," and doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night's sleep, these experts wrote in an opinion piece published online recently by the journal Nature.

This isn't the 60s Tim Leary tune in drop out thinking. It's creating a need off a perceived benefit which if you're paranoid enough will have you labeled a malcontent or defective by not accepting that which clearly make you better. I don't know what bothers me more, someone deciding that this is just what we need or the consumer's walmart mentality that if it's there for sale, it's ok to buy.


<- here is the complete ABC online news article ->

SoftBank Mobile testing smart movie posters

Pink Tentacle posts an article about some new "MallCityish" tech being tested that should send Saunders screaming. SoftBank Mobile is testing tech for what they are calling smart movie posters. The "posters" use Near Field Communication (NFC) — a short-range high-frequency wireless communication technology that lets users view digital content simply by holding their compatible cellphones near the posters. Throughout October participants will be able to receive information about the movie by holding their compatible device close to the poster. If they have the proper television at home, they will also be able to view this beamed material on their home equipment as well. The tests, which are designed to help the companies evaluate the effectiveness and potential of smart posters as a promotional medium, could be a sign of things to come in the field of poster advertising.

<- Source: Nikkei Net via Pink Tentacle ->

Visual technology enables brain to learn in new ways

Shades of Mall City! Funded by a $350,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, Tufts' new 14-foot by 8-foot visualization display offers a combination of advanced features.

"Users will be able to manipulate, simulate, touch and literally immerse themselves in data in a way they never have been able to before," said Amelia Tynan, vice president and chief information officer and co-principal investigator.

The Tufts system can combine the sense of touch with that of sight through haptic devices that convey varying levels of resistance to the user when he or she touches graphical objects on the display wall.

Sounds like something the Spacing Guild's Navigators of the Dune-iverse, or the hyperspace pilots of the Phoenix in Cherryh's Foreigner series, would be comfy with, or the Mall City educators and advertisers.