Coronavirus
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ALB – “I don’t know about the rest of you here but I’m not going to download that app allowing my movements and who I meet to be tracked.”
Can I suggest downloading the App and if you’re going to the supermarket, out for a day trip, etc. take the phone with you. But if you’re meeting Carlos the Jackal for lunch, or going to a meeting of the illuminati, leave your smart phone in the house. 🙂
I read that it’s not going to work properly on iPhones anyway. Another government cock-up by the sound of things.
MeanwhiIe I see from today’s Times that Liberty, the former National Council for Civil Liberties, thinks that “for our freedom of movement to be possible only by submitting to mass surveillance is a step too far.” A bit ambiguous as I don’t think the government is thinking of saying you can’t move freely unless you download the app. Or are they? If they are, what about those who haven’t got a smartphone?
Sounds again like conspiracists spreading rumours.
Why should socialists worry about a surveillance state? We’re not conspirators.
David McWilliams: I think it is fair to say that capitalism – in the course of this unprecedented crisis – has been suspended. We are not going back to where we were, to business as usual. The state has come back, and this episode will not be forgotten by the electorate. I don’t know where we are going, but one thing seems clear: we are not going back.
Yanis Varoufakis: I like this phrase: capitalism has been suspended. The last time capitalism was suspended in the west was during the second world war, with the advent of the war economy: a command economy that fixed prices. The war economy marked the transcendence of the standard capitalist model. But what we see now is not so much the suspension of capitalism. The rules of capitalism may have been suspended – all those sacrosanct policies are gone, the neat separation of fiscal and monetary policy is gone, the idea that public debt is a bad thing is gone.Full article here but seems a debate about government policy and not anything beyond capitalism
(As an aside to another discussion, we forgot the Commonwealth of Independent States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_States)
The new epicentre is moving to Brasil
“Why should socialists worry about a surveillance state? We’re not conspirators.”
Agreed the Party has nothing to hide from anyone including the State except the membership list (some employers might not like to employ socialists). But I would have thought we were against the State monitoring the activity of its subjects, socialists included. Or do you like the DWP snooping to see if you are genuinely seeking employment? Or your personal life being tracked?
My personal life being tracked … This makes me think of the New Yorker Woody Allen cartoon in which Woody brings a friend to his apartment.
“This is my bedroom. Boy, if these walls could talk!”
And the walls answer:
“We can, and, believe us, nothing ever happens.”
France will discard 10 million litres of beer due to expire, undrunk, with consumers in coronavirus lockdown, the national brewers’ association said
We are already being controlled, by our dependency on and thralldom to the mobile phone.
What’s wrong with mobile phones? A great invention. Means I can respond to criticism of them from wherever I am at any time.
The addiction for one thing. The preponderant replacing by them of all natural interaction for another.
Everyone is glued to them.
Don’t you know that many young people sit in the same room texting each other instead of speaking?
They’ve replaced books.
An excellent piece by Coleman exposed this in advance years ago in the Standard. And most of what people are hooked by on them is inane.
The application of the new technology has enabled me to converse and interact face to face with comrades in the USA and Thailand and friends in Australia dispersed due to global capitalism.
A boon for me personally, as I lipread and can follow visual clues when I mishear. The recent take up of it by our EC has enabled socialist activity to continue despite the present lock down, on the Discord app.
We are now able to digitally access all of Marx’s published works on Marxists .org and place much of our important contributions on the same platform.
I feel more connected with comrades now than hitherto and long may these technological fixes continue.
What’s wrong with mobile phones?
A general loss in the ability to focus for long periods of time. Though how true that is I don’t know. I keep meaning to look up some studies, but keep getting distracted by notifications on my social media.
Exactly, and i’m not saying it hasn’t its uses for political work and instant communication.
But its nature is to replace instead of complement, and those of us who want the real rather than the virtual are being deprived of the option.
I can’t see why it is the “nature” of a mobile phone to “replace” face to face conversation any more than it’s the nature of an ordinary phone to do so. It’s a useful tool for communication between humans. And how do mobile phones deprive you of the option of face to face conversations?
ps texting is a good innovation too.
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