The Prisoner: A. B. and C.
on
The Cat Cam
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· Score: 1
While the work on cats is interesting science, there are more serious ethical issues involved than those impacting on the ethical treatment of cats.
This story reminds me of an episode of Patrick McGoohan's remarkable 1969 TV series "The Prisoner". In the episode "A. B. and C." the Prisoner is hooked up to electrodes, given a drug, and Number 2 can watch on TV as the Prisoner's dreams unfold. (The Prisoner was a great achievement, by the way).
There are serious implications to our right of privacy here, of hooking people up to machines to extract the information stored in their brains. We are breaking down the final barriers of our ability to keep our thoughts to ourselves. Lie detectors are a joke compared to this threat to our privacy (should its potential ever be realized).
I'd include "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll as a historically significantly book in the (short) history of the internet, for several reasons. It's a glimpse of the relationship of the early Internet vs. the the real world (technically, legally, and personally). It presents the best documented case of early internet cracking. It's a slice of life (almost a diary) of a unix sysadmin from the early 80's.
Stoll's other book, "Silicon Snake Oil" should also be considered. I provokes the question "What will be the impact of the internet on the quality of life of the people who use it?"
Slashdot Mirror
While the work on cats is interesting science, there are more serious ethical issues involved than those impacting on the ethical treatment of cats.
This story reminds me of an episode of Patrick McGoohan's remarkable 1969 TV series "The Prisoner". In the episode "A. B. and C." the Prisoner is hooked up to electrodes, given a drug, and Number 2 can watch on TV as the Prisoner's dreams unfold. (The Prisoner was a great achievement, by the way).
There are serious implications to our right of privacy here, of hooking people up to machines to extract the information stored in their brains. We are breaking down the final barriers of our ability to keep our thoughts to ourselves. Lie detectors are a joke compared to this threat to our privacy (should its potential ever be realized).
I'd include "The Cuckoo's Egg" by Cliff Stoll as
a historically significantly book in the (short) history of the internet, for several reasons. It's a glimpse of the relationship of the early Internet vs. the the real world (technically, legally, and personally). It presents the best documented case of early internet cracking. It's a slice of life (almost a diary) of a unix sysadmin from the early 80's.
Stoll's other book, "Silicon Snake Oil" should also be considered. I provokes the question "What will be the impact of the internet on the quality of life of the people who use it?"
(I hope most of you have read these).