I was reading a story the other day about the geezers who pulled the great Hatton Garden heist. It is a fun read, but what jumped out to me was how the cops caught these guys. London is so thick with surveillance cameras; you simply cannot escape having your every move documented. In this case, they traced the movement of the car involved via CCTV and figured out who was involved. Then they listened in on their conversations via electronic surveillance.

The thieves had some understanding of this, but as the one detective said, “They were analog criminals operating in a digital world, and no match for digital detectives.” In this case, they managed to knock out many of the cameras, but missed one and that was their downfall. The data from that one camera along with the data tracking the movement of all subjects in Britain now, was enough to solve the crime.

We are just on the cusp of the surveillance state. The looming end of cash will mean all of your financial transactions can be quickly harvested by the state. We have been conditioned for this via the television for years now. Every cop show has the earnest detectives rummaging around in the suspect’s financial affairs without a warrant. Most people think it happens now so when it comes on-line no one will squawk. After all, public safety requires it and who could possibly be against it?

The end of cash has another implication. Without cash, all transactions will be above ground. Implementing block-chain technology means that the history of every bit of currency will be carried with that bit of currency. The black market will have to be a barter economy. The above ground economy will be a permission based system. Fat people will not be allowed to solicit ice cream shops, for example, unless some thin person pays their way. In effect, everyone will be on allowance.

I was watching a show on the Norse the other day. The show was about how researchers are using new technology to figure out where to dig for Norse settlements. Specifically, they use satellite imagining that can “see” in near–ultraviolet. The satellites can also pickup variations in the electromagnetic radiation along the surface of the earth. This lets the researchers identify what is under the grass, noticing old stone and even mud walls. The accuracy of modern satellites is feet so they can just about pinpoint exactly where to dig.

The next generation of satellites will be even better and cheaper. The new Google satellites will be able to see faces at street level. Looking inside structures with the use of the full light spectrum is just around the corner. In the not too distant future, the state will have 24×7 eyes in the sky that can see and hear anything that is happening above ground. Coupled with expanding use of technology like the “Stingray Tracking Devices”, everything you say and do will be in a database at a government agency.

That is the other bit people do not think about right now. You walk around with your mobile phone and it is now reporting your whereabouts to the phone company and the app developers for those things you downloaded. Google has been keeping tabs on you for a long time. In a cash free society where you have to carry a device in order to conduct basic commerce, mandating this sort of tracking is too easy.

Soon enough, everyone will be able to track everyone, thus making all of us agents of the state. That is the genius behind all of this. Organized social pressure is the way populations will be controlled, much in the way cattlemen manage their herds. Once you realize everyone knows what you are doing and saying, even in private moments, you will act in a way that is “appropriate” even when no one is looking.

The brave new world will be safe, at least, unless you say the wrong things on social media. Then you can expect men with guns to bust down your door and haul you off to jail. Even if they only haul away the hard core haters, you can probably expect to have social media audits where you will have to explain your tweets, posts and so forth. You may not have to sit through a tax audit, but you will be sitting through struggle sessions over your internet activity.

That is the thing Huxley could not see clearly, but he had some inkling of this. For those who read the book, you will recall that people, in the future he imagined, were always under scrutiny. Bernard Marx was exiled to the island of non-conformists for what we would today call trolling. Bernard Marx was a contrarian and a jerk, which is pretty much everyone on-line these days. It is also why our betters are berserk over policing the internet. It is easy to see how this will end.

At least in the World State, everyone was high on soma most of the time. Soma is a hallucinogenic similar to peyote. I write most of these posts micro-dosing mescalin so I can tell you the future will not be too bad, except for the giant spiders.  Then again, the future promises to include an inoculation against drug use. The day when science can “cure” drug abuse and alcoholism is a lot closer than people realize. Imagine a time when you can drink all the beer you like and never get drunk.

That may sound far-fetched but look at the way our keepers treat vice today. They are endlessly hounding us about our diets, our drinking and our exercise. My fondest memories of my father are of him with a Marlboro in his hand. Today, a gaggle of angry lesbians will assault you if you light up in public. All the things that come natural to men will be banned. That is what awaits the toddlers crawling around on the floors of Western homes right now. No wonder white men are offing themselves at record numbers. The future will suck.