FC: "Too Much Information" on Poindexter's TIA, from The New Yorker

From: Declan McCullagh (declanat_private)
Date: Thu Dec 12 2002 - 17:22:43 PST

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    http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?021209ta_talk_hertzberg
    
        December 12, 2002 | home
        COMMENT
        TOO MUCH INFORMATIONIssue of 2002-12-09
        Posted 2002-12-02
    
        When it comes to concocting fevered visions of the future as a way of
        illuminating the present, Jules Verne got some things right in his
        time, Aldous Huxley got others, and George Orwell got still others. In
        our time--in this terror-haunted interlude (we hope) of background-hum
        dread and well-founded paranoia--no literary divinator gets it righter
        than the sci-fi pulp master Philip K. Dick, author of "Clans of the
        Alphane Moon" and dozens of other books, and inspirer of some of
        Hollywood's spookiest dystopias, including "Blade Runner," "Total
        Recall," and "Minority Report." And this is odd, given that he has
        been dead for twenty years. Too bad he's not still around. It would be
        interesting to get his take on the Information Awareness Office of the
        Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of
        Defense.
    
        The Information Awareness Office plays it so weird that one can't help
        suspecting that somebody on its staff might be putting us on. The
        Information Awareness Office's official seal features an occult
        pyramid topped with mystic all-seeing eye, like the one on the dollar
        bill. Its official motto is "Scientia Est Potentia," which doesn't
        mean "science has a lot of potential." It means "knowledge is power."
        And its official mission is to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate,
        demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and
        prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter
        asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness."
    
        [...]
    
    
    
    
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