Temporal gain becomes eternal loss. Americans are hopeless secular millenarians, ever sure that just right around the corner America will succeed in creating heaven on earth. A favourite millennial vision for computer and Internet technology, especially among libertarian types, is that new technology will bring new freedom and new ways of challenging state monopolies and oppression. Maybe not . The sword of technology cuts both ways.
Governments can use it in horrible new ways against citizens.
Since 1947 the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have jointly spied on the world under the name Project Echelon. The program reportedly intercepts over three billion e-mails, cell phone calls, faxes, and wireline communications every day. Then there is the internal threat to liberty, the threat that modernism and money will demand more and more of our time and attention until there is nothing left of ourselves that we can call ours . Go to any metropolitan bookstore. Look at the browsers, shopping around leisurely, tasting of the delights proffered by the shelves while jabbering into the cell-phones plastered to their ears.