Annalee Newitz on Total Information Awareness:
For some reason, TIA reminds me of a scene from the movie “Blue Velvet” in which evildoer Frank rapes damsel in distress Dorothy. As he subdues her, he screams, “Don’t look at me! Don’t you fucking look at me!” His power comes, in part, from his ability to look at her when she cannot look at him.
Even if Jordan Kare has explained some of the creepy sounding terms of art used by the Pentagon project, it bothers me. That dread that someone’s going to be vaporized by an orbiting X-Ray laser due to bureaucratic error. Okay, so that’s “Brazil” and not “Blue Velvet”.
