Top 15 John Twelve Hawks Quotes

One cliché endlessly offered up by the people supporting government surveillance is that there needs to be a “trade-off” between security and privacy. But this is a trade that goes only one way. It’s clear that we’ve lost control over what personal information is public and what we prefer to keep private. The new reality is that they see us, but we can’t see them.

Identity is not taste or fashion; it has nothing to do with what we’ve purchased in the past or want to buy in the future. Identity comes from making real choices that force you to decide what is true, fair, and just. Identity is not given to you; it’s earned by your life experiences.

Any monitoring system that is invisible, pervasive, automatic, and permanent gives those in power the means to create a modern surveillance state. And these new states will have an authority that has detached itself from ethics and ideology. Politicians and dictators will continue to make speeches, but their words will become meaningless. This new system will see and know us. It will even predict our future behavior.

Gradually, I realized that the surveillance cameras plus the email and cell phone monitoring was creating a Virtual Panopticon – a digital prison created and maintained by computer networks that enclosed all of us within its invisible walls.

Children defer to adults because they’re older, bigger and stronger. But it’s also because children believe that adults have reasons for what they do. There was nothing magical about the Pied Piper of Hamelin’s flute. The Piper acted like he knew where he was going and the children followed him into the dark mountains where they were never seen again.

One of the pleasures of writing novels is that my characters usually do something. But in real life we often stay locked in a situation that we know is painful or wrong.

In Orwell’s 1984, all Party members must assemble for a “Two Minutes Hate” session where they watch a propaganda film showing the Party’s enemies. The establishment of the Virtual Panopticon insures that these group meetings aren’t necessary. Those in power now have the resources to deliver a political message tailored to the specific fears of the individual citizen. Yes, we’ll still have political rallies and conventions, but these will be empty gestures retained from the past.

Both dogs and humans know when we’ve been caged.

What happens in our future can change the meaning of what has happened in our past.

Lying, not love, is the fundamental indication of humanity.

Most conscious thought is simply an attempt to claim ‘authorship’ for a choice that has already been made. Our thoughts are just an ongoing attempt to explain what we’ve already decided.

All language – everything we say – is just an approximation of reality.

A Vast Machine watched and evaluated them, remembering their past actions and predicting their future behavior.

Artificial intelligence is a concept that obscures accountability. Our problem is not machines acting like humans -- it’s humans acting like machines.

No machine can daydream. When they’re not switched on, they’re as cold as a toaster in a midnight kitchen.