Dust Net
The Future of Surveillance, Privacy, and Communication:
Why Drones Are Just the Beginning
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For thousands of years, we humans have associated walls with privacy. No matter how primitive our hovel, once inside it we are safe from the eyes and — if we keep our voices low enough — the ears of others.
For ages before that, long before our ancestors had evolved to be human beings, an individual could avoid observation by other members of the group by simply distancing himself physically from them.
In both cases, privacy was gained but communication with others was lost.
The pushback against control of the channels of communication, and the growing availability of cheap, tiny surveillance devices, are about to merge.
This will represent a giant step, an immense change, not so much technically as socially. The social and personal implications are enormous. Everything we have known and believed about privacy and communication for thousands upon thousands of years will cease to be true.
Summary from a Reader
This is a work of nonfiction plus some speculation. It's largely about drones and their very rapid miniaturization, their present and coming use in law enforcement and war, and a potential future in which spy and communication equipment will literally be the size of dust motes, almost impossible to see and impossible to escape.
It's also about the complete lack of privacy that is coming in the future.
Parts of the book are encouraging, detailing how such devices will help rescue people after disasters, help people escape the control of repressive governments, and simply communicate more easily with one another. But most of the book is chilling indeed, portraying a future that will be very, very different from our past.
What's really important is that this is NOT a work of science fiction. Many of the devices described here either exist already or are in the development stage.
No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you need to read this book, because to know the future is to help yourself prepare for it.