[LINK] early predictions and reactions to surveillance

[Jan Whitaker]

author to remain anonymous:


>As you all probably know -- spammers often include random words and story 
>excerpts in their messages in order to defeat spam filtering. The other 
>day I happened to open a spam message that contained the following paragraph:
>
>>"And there's another of your unnatural devices," said Rob, putting the 
>>Automatic Record of Events upon the table beside the other things. "What 
>>right have you to capture vibrations that radiate from private and secret 
>>actions and discover them to others who have no business to know them? 
>>This would be a fine world if every body could peep into every one else's 
>>affairs, wouldn't it? And here is your Character Marker. Nice thing for a 
>>decent person to own, isn't it? Any one who would take advantage of such 
>>a sneaking invention as that would be worse than a thief! Oh, I've used 
>>them, of course, and I ought to be spanked for having been so mean and 
>>underhanded; but I'll never be guilty of looking through them again."
>
>It kind of caught my attention, so I checked the 'Net.  Sure enough, it's 
>out there.  But to my surprise, this paragraph is an excerpt from a fable 
>by Frank L. Baum (you know him -- he's the guy who wrote "The Wizard of 
>Oz").  The fable is called:
>
>The Master Key
>An Electrical Fairy Tale
>Founded Upon The Mysteries Of Electricity
>And The Optimism Of Its Devotees. It Was Written For Boys, But Others May 
>Read It
>
>I don't know if he was the first to do so -- but it seems that Baum 
>predicted the taser(tm) (the high-voltage stun gun).  For any interested, 
>here is the story:
>http://fairy-tales.classic-literature.co.uk/frank-l-baum-the-master-key/



JLWhitaker Associates
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at melbpc.org.au  --  http://member.melbpc.org.au/~jwhit/whitentr.htm
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