George Rebane
The sheeple are quiet and compliant. But this old gray fox is furious and helpless. We just got our notice from PG&E saying they are “excited to inform (us) that we’ll soon be installing SmartMeter™ technology” in our neighborhood. This small piece of hardware will “empower you to take greater control of your energy consumption, use less energy, and save money.”
It will do nothing of the sort. Using our old meter, we can save or spend as much as we will from the published time-of-day rate tables. But the SmartMeter™ will prepare the way for Big Brother to reach into our home to control every ‘chipped’ appliance that we will soon be buying, including without limitation the ability to monitor ALL electrical activity in the privacy of our homes, impose address specific brown-outs, and/or completely turn off power to our home. All of this will be done under government imprimatur and algorithmically without a human in the loop thank you.
The green chorus is already singing its hosannas to yet another level of state control, while the rest of us mumble in our beer and do nothing. Long ago Orwell tried to warn us of life under a technologically steroidal tyranny (here and here). We did not listen and instead have been taught to be happy on our path to this new world. Unfortunately, my education has been faulty.
[update] Friend and fellow ‘knuckledragger’ (the libs love us) Russ Steele (NC MediaWatch) alerted us to the onset of this phase of Big Brother in Nevada County with his own posts on NCMW and CABPRO Report. For more detail on the technology and additional implications, please visit here, here, and here.
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