Modern high speed computers, with massive memories, have made feasible surveillance on a scale undreamed of 40 years ago. Dramatized in the novel, "1984" (published in 1949), snooping on the lives of private citizens has, more recently, been shown by Edward Snowden (among others) to be a major activity of the US government. The 2010 national intelligence budget was $80 billion, 70% of which was outsourced to private companies [9].
Telephone surveillance on a worldwide basis by the US government, and by other governments, gathers detailed information about billions of phone calls per day. Other sorts of mass surveillance of people, include compiling information about snail-mail and e-mail. Police in several states are experimenting with the use of drones to surveil people [10]. Both major parties have compiled massive data bases with many details about almost all American voters [11].
Progress in the wrong direction:
Sad to say, progress in technology is often counterproductive from the point of view of human well-being. An obvious example is the fact that a major use of sophisticated technology is the development, manufacture, deployment, and use of deadly weapons. More generally, profit for the wealthy is the implicit goal of technology development today. Any benefits (or harm) to the general population are incidental side effects. Consider the following example illustrating a fundamental problem.
BPA (bisphenol-A) is a widely used chemical that people are exposed to in many ways. Perhaps the most important is its use to coat the inside of food cans. At least as early as 2007, long after it was in wide use, BPA was found to have a number of harmful effects on people exposed to it [12]. Nevertheless, manufacturers using it, for example in tin cans containing food products, vigorously resisted efforts to ban its use. As is typical in such situations, their tactics delayed for years even the partial phasing out of its use. But that is not the end of the story. In many cases BPS (bisphenol-S) was substituted for BPA. Preliminary studies suggest that BPS may be even more harmful than BPA, but it will take years to establish this [13]. Meanwhile BPS will be widely used because of the implicit rule that an ingredient is considered innocent (harmless) until proven guilty (harmful).
Indicative of the deteriorating regulation of our food supply is that, due to inadequate budgets, FDA (Food and Drug Administration) food inspections dropped from about 50,000 in 1972 to about 5,000 in 2005 [14]. The situation is, if anything, even worse with respect to pharmaceutical products [15].
There is no significant political movement aimed at reversing this process, which is, in effect, supported by both major political parties. Instead, the trend is to go further in the wrong direction, which I commented on several years ago [16].
The greatest immediate threat to humanity is posed by the thermonuclear weapons in the arsenals of 9 countries. The detonation of many hundreds of such weapons in various forms could conceivably terminate humanity. But, instead of launching a major effort to negotiate the elimination of this terrible menace, the US government (both the previous and current administrations) plans to spend many hundreds of billions of dollars during the next 25 years, on the upgrading of our nuclear arsenal.
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