Codepunk 041 Surveillance in Utopia and Dystopia

by Bill Ahern on

Every few weeks there seems to be a discussion about the current problems with technology intermingled with our Corporatist culture, and undoubtedly, Star Trek is brought up as the litmus test of a post-money society where technology is working for the people rather than the Big Brother societies that we see in dystopian cyberpunk stories. But what is the difference between technology--and surveillance--in a utopian vs. dystopian society, and where is the delineation between issues originating from technology itself, and issues arising from our societal structure and evolving moral code.

In this episode, we talk about surveillance and data collection, and what it would take to make that data work for the people instead of only for the corporations that seem to violate our trust on a daily basis.