Apple + iPad + Huxley = Orwellian nightmare Technology
by Volker Weber
For the implication of an iPad-crazed world - with its millions of delighted, infatuated users - is that a single US company renowned for control-freakery will have become the gatekeeper to the online world. The iPad - like the iPhone - is a closed, tightly controlled device: nothing gets on to it that has not been expressly approved by Apple. We will have arrived at an Orwellian end by Huxleian means. And be foolish enough to think that we've attained nirvana.More >
Comments
British “journalists” crack me up.
Yeah, the people that use iPhones today are clearly all idiots ;)
Oh yes, and a guy from a country that has more CCTV cameras than any other country in the world has the guts to talk about "Orwellian"?
Give me a break...
Everything in the modern media is about hysteria and convoluted priorities:
- Most nations have been subjected to prolonged attention from some terrorist group or other in their history.
- Aeroplanes are always being blown-up.
- No-one is being forced to buy iStuff at gun-point.
- No-one is forced to pay any attention to twitter and its ilk.
… yet if you read mainstream news media nowadays, you’d think the world was coming to an end.
...I do hope that a citizen of a state that is implementing pervasive surveillance is still allowed to voice his concerns about other potential dangers to personal freedom.
And I hold that there is some reason for the concern of this journalist - while not all iPhone users are idiots (and by the same token, not all Google users are idiots), it is valid to ponder the power of such a company as collector of and gatekeeper to information.
At least with Apple, there already is a concrete example of censorship (the Bild app), and while we might not be fond of the paper that was censored or the content that was censored, we should protest now before it is our own voice that is cut out by a controlling entity.
I find the reactions far more interesting than the original post.
Don't like the iPad, but so far nobody forces me to buy or use it, so I don't care.
