![]() ![]() JC: Electronic surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms. Morpheus: The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. JC: Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are. Morpheus: Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. JC: I don't see anything amusing about spying on people. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves. Morpheus: I was a prototype for Echelon IV. Everett allows me to convey the highest and most succint tier of any pyramidal construct of knowledge. Morpheus: I am a prototype for a much larger system. JC: Are you programmed to invent riddles? You are another kind of question with another kind of answer. The unplanned organism is a question asked by Nature and answered by death. Morpheus: You are carefully watched by many people. So what? My brother and I suspected as much while we were growing up. Morpheus: You are a planned organism, the offspring of knowledge and imagination rather than of individuals. I am a prototype for a much larger system. Morpheus: I must greet each visitor with a complete summary of his file. Isaac: Are you crazy? Don't even say that name in here! Isaac: A tourist with a deathwish! Better just throw yourself in the canal. Isaac: The mark of the educated man is the suppression of these qualities in favor of better ones. JC: Perhaps certain qualities are an inseparable part of human nature. Isaac: A system organized around the weakest qualities of individuals will produce these same qualities in its leaders. JC: The separation of powers acknowledges the petty ambitions of individuals that's its strength. The Trilateral Commission in the United States, for instance. JC: Hardly as sinister as a dictator, like China's Premier. Isaac: Well-paid researchers - how do you say it? - "think tanks," funded by big businesses. And you believe it! Don't you know where those slogans come from? ![]() JC: Our governments have limited power by design. The West, so afraid of strong government, now has no government. This is real freedom, freedom to own property, make a profit, make your life. Authoritarian but willing - unlike U.N.-governed countries - to give its people the freedom to do what they want. Isaac: China is the last sovereign country in the world. JC: You said "outside influences." What does China fear? Isaac: Maybe the Luminous Path, but China knows that the Red Arrow are business owners, entrepreneurs, community leaders, and that they protect the city from outside influences. JC: I would think the secret smuggling operations of the Triads would disturb the Chinese government. They barricade the roads to control trade to the mainland, but they know how business is done. Isaac: The Chinese leave Hong Kong alone. JC: Despite all I've read about the Triads, I wasn't prepared to see them operating in the open, on the streets, and wearing uniforms. ![]()
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