A BETTER IDEA
                    (C)1998 Alan M. Schwartz

(Tip of the hat to B. Reed, J. Logatan, K. Foster, J. Popelish 
for grinding Matlab, Python, and MathCad.)

Java was first brought forth to program kitchen appliances.  Java 
applets now pestilently infest the World Wide Web (that singular 
conceptus whose three letter abbreviation has three times as many 
syllables as its whole words summed).  Data transfer constipates 
as Mickeysoft Windoze' scourge of icons vigorously scratching 
their asses and exhibiting animated clonic fits subsumes entire 
Merced microprocessors planetwide.  In the spirit of government 
oversight, that any bad idea vies 5% closer to grace through 
doubling its budget, a better future awaits.

Telephones began as clunky multipartite objects wired into walls.  
Sleek wireless cell telephony blankets the Earth, from Botswana 
to Pacoima, immune to copper cable thieves and the homeless 
urinating into public telephone coin return slots.  For a mere 
pittance one can snare global communication, and it you.  Coded 
cell feedback allows triangulation and localization of any 
transmitter, soon to directly interface with the Global 
Positioning Satellite system.  Nobody need ever again be lost, or 
lost to State intendance.  A better future is aborning.

What debasements source inchoate sin and sedition?  US penal 
systems reveal the futility of punishing 4% of the population 
with gratis three square meals/day, air conditioning, cable TV, 
recreational facilities, recreational pharmaceuticals, and free 
habitation.  Ditto Welfare.  A child is the aggregate of its 
experiences.  If an infant could be - microsecond to microsecond 
through adulthood - subject to only good thought, thoughtcrime 
would be expunged within a generation or two, one way or another.  
In earlier times this required 90% of the population continuously 
surveilling the remaining 10%, and whom could we trust?  The 
future is no longer state of the art.

Six trillion people populate Earth.  If each hoards 1000 
consequential chattels there is a trifling array of six 
quadrillion (15,50F,7DC,A70,000 hexadecimal) objects hewn into 
the pervasive State Web.  Do you have any idea how much surplus 
RAM floods our planet?  No problem.  Chip in everything, give it 
cell addresses, Web addresses, a central server, and be done with 
it.  Every toaster, every Barbie and GI Joe, every television set 
and VCR, every adult toy can embrace its owner with jackbooted 
State compassion 24 hours/day.

Blue collar crime will be ended.  No object of value will be 
truant lest a Federal endictment and summary judgement swiftly 
follow.  National Security Agency pattern recognition software 
intercepts and interprets for Official concern all analog and 
digital; wireless, wired, and fiberoptic traffic in North 
America.  The NSA's global surveillance network, Echelon, assays 
all European email, telephone, and fax (Wired 6.06 106 (1998)).  
Communicate a death threat against the President and the Secret 
Service will be on you like stink on the homeless.  (Matters of 
State like India and Pakistan popping a dozen nukes underground 
to rattle each other's cages in mid-1998 proceed unnoticed.)

Every human could be unceasingly monitored down to heartbeat and 
respiration for the cost of building our obsolete B-1 bomber 
fleet.  Every child could be saved with good thought, and only 
certified and credentialed molesters allowed to operate.  (Call 
it another Federal enforcement pseudopod - the War on Bad 
Childhood.)  Data physical storage requirements would be met by 
military surplus equipment hangars in Bell, California, current 
contents to be dumped in the Mariana Trench (as a cultural 
anthropolgical benchmark) or written off as a data glitch.

The future has been here for years!  PETtrac/AVID already 
supplies radio-addressable, implantable encapsulated chip 
monitors the size of rice grains for animals.  Employees burdened 
by their smard ID badges could be liberated by a tiny forearm 
bump.  Then, as with our Social Security numbers not being a 
valid mode of identification and used for that very purpose at 
every turn, everybody gets an implant suite at birth or 
retrofitted, as a humanitarian gesture, by law. 

America would be saved!  Your wallet or purse bulging with cards, 
slips, and licenses would be emptied at a stroke, nor would you 
need money.  All would be infallably handled and continuously 
monitored by the State through your chipset.  The Most Wanted 
list vanishes overnight.  Nobody could enter a Smart Doorway 
without being fingered.  Undocumented miscreants would be free 
fire zones for constabulary and concerned citizens alike (their 
weapons chipped into the system, of course).

If you are bad, there might be technical difficulties. 

I suggest the Mickeysoft Windows environment.  It is free of all 
bugs, fast, compact, efficient, utterly secure against intrusion, 
and never crashes.  We are from the government.  We are here to 
help ourselves to you.  We have come for a piece of all mankind.