Imagine a country, which created it’s own global navigation system. Soon after that the government obliged certain class of drivers to buy and keep in a car a tachograph. this device needs to be acquired from the government, and the driver must pay her monthly salary for obtaining it. later, all those drivers get the new requirement: before making a trip, they have to visit a special website, and register the source and destination points of the trip. then the site will generate a route for the driver. the website does not work well. sometimes it’s impossible to register, and sometimes it does not generate optimal, or even feasible route. the driver has to buy another device, which tracks him, and if he makes even a small change in the route, then the huge penalty follows. also, this class of drivers needs to pay for the roads.
surveillance system is provided by a private company which got a permit and huge financial aid from the government to create a web site, and the device, as well as to build checkpoints on the roads to get the fees. this company belongs to the son of the president’s close friend. as well as many other private projects that get government money.
in spite of protests, decision is enforced, and president publicly says that his friend’s son is talented young entrepreneur. why not to give him those drivers?
do you think such an utopian country exists? yes, it’s called russian federation. apparently.
#russia #surveillance #tachograph #glonass #corruption #pressure #navigation #obligation #utopia
All efforts to describe permanent happiness, on the other hand, have been failures, from earliest history onwards.
A book like Brave New World is an expression of the actual fear that modern man feels of the rationalised hedonistic society which it is within his power to create.
For one of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too- rational and too- comfortable world.
The earlier parts of Gulliver’s Travels are probably the most devastating attack on human society that has ever been written. Every word of them is relevant today.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98010494
#orwell #art #utopia #literature
