Espantosamente, a astrofísica moderna está prestes a determinar percepções fundamentais da origem, natureza e destino de todo o universo. O universo está em expansão. Todas as galáxias estão se afastando velozmente umas das outras no que é chamado de fluxo de Hubble, uma das três principais evidências de uma enorme explosão na época em que o universo teve início — ou, pelo menos, sua presente encarnação. A gravidade da Terra é bastante forte para atrair de volta uma pedra atirada para o céu, mas não um foguete com velocidade de escape. E assim acontece com o universo: se ele contém uma grande quantidade de matéria, a gravidade exercida por toda essa matéria vai diminuir e deter a expansão. Um universo em expansão será convertido num universo em colapso. E se não há bastante matéria, a expansão vai continuar para sempre. O presente inventário de matéria no universo é insuficiente para diminuir a expansão, mas há razões para pensar que talvez exista uma grande quantidade de matéria escura que não trai a sua existência emitindo luz, para a conveniência dos astrônomos. Se o universo em expansão se revelar apenas temporário, sendo finalmente substituído por um universo em contração, isso certamente criará a possibilidade de que o universo passa por um número infinito de expansões e contrações, sendo infinitamente antigo. Um universo infinitamente antigo não tem necessidade de ser criado. Sempre esteve ali. Por outro lado, se não há matéria suficiente para reverter a expansão, isso seria coerente com um universo criado do nada. Essas são questões profundas e difíceis que toda cultura humana tem de algum modo tentado enfrentar. Mas é só na nossa época que temos uma perspectiva real de desvendar algumas das respostas. Não por meio de conjeturas ou histórias — mas por observações reais, verificáveis, passíveis de repetição.

(Carl Sagan. Bilhões e bilhões, 2008.)

Sometimes, it is the very ordinariness of a scene that makes it terrifying. So it was with a clip from a recent BBC documentary on facial recognition technology. A man tries to avoid the cameras, covering his face by pulling up his jacket. He is stopped by the police and forced to have his photo taken. He is then fined £90 for “disorderly behavior”. “What’s your suspicion?” someone asks the police. “The fact that he’s walked past clearly masking his face from recognition,” replies one of the officers. If you want to protect your privacy, it must be because you have something to hide.

There is considerable concern in the west about Chinese tech firms acting as Trojan horses for Beijing. But perhaps we should worry less about the tech companies than about the social use of technology. Because it’s not just in China that “algorithmic governance” is beginning to take hold. As the tech entrepreneur Maciej Ceglowski pointed out before the US Senate, “Until recently, even people living in a police state could count on the fact that the authorities didn’t have enough equipment or manpower to observe everyone, everywhere, and so enjoyed more freedom from monitoring than we do living in a free society today.”

Surveillance is at the heart, too, of “smart cities”. From Amsterdam to Dubai to Toronto, cities are embracing technology to collect data on citizens, ostensibly to make public services and urban spaces function better. But what smart cities also enable is a new form of policing. As the mayor of Rio de Janeiro said of the “integrated urban command centre” built for the 2016 Olympics, the system “allows us to have people looking into every corner of the city, 24 hours a day, seven days a week”.

Buses that run on time and rubbish that is efficiently cleared are good things (in most smart cities, and in Rio as well, neither actually happens). There is, however, more to the good life than an ordered city. Human flourishing requires the existence of a sphere of life outside public scrutiny; not only within the intimacy of the home but also in semi-private spaces such as the workplace or the church or the pub. It’s that kind of space shielded from scrutiny that increasingly is vanishing. As Ceglowski observed, one of the features of the “new world of ambient surveillance” is that “we cannot opt out of it, any more than we might opt out of automobile culture by refusing to drive”. And that is possibly the most disturbing thought of all.

(Kenan Malik. www.theguardian.com, 19.05.2019. Adaptado.)

Sometimes, it is the very ordinariness of a scene that makes it terrifying. So it was with a clip from a recent BBC documentary on facial recognition technology. A man tries to avoid the cameras, covering his face by pulling up his jacket. He is stopped by the police and forced to have his photo taken. He is then fined £90 for “disorderly behavior”. “What’s your suspicion?” someone asks the police. “The fact that he’s walked past clearly masking his face from recognition,” replies one of the officers. If you want to protect your privacy, it must be because you have something to hide.

There is considerable concern in the west about Chinese tech firms acting as Trojan horses for Beijing. But perhaps we should worry less about the tech companies than about the social use of technology. Because it’s not just in China that “algorithmic governance” is beginning to take hold. As the tech entrepreneur Maciej Ceglowski pointed out before the US Senate, “Until recently, even people living in a police state could count on the fact that the authorities didn’t have enough equipment or manpower to observe everyone, everywhere, and so enjoyed more freedom from monitoring than we do living in a free society today.”

Surveillance is at the heart, too, of “smart cities”. From Amsterdam to Dubai to Toronto, cities are embracing technology to collect data on citizens, ostensibly to make public services and urban spaces function better. But what smart cities also enable is a new form of policing. As the mayor of Rio de Janeiro said of the “integrated urban command centre” built for the 2016 Olympics, the system “allows us to have people looking into every corner of the city, 24 hours a day, seven days a week”.

Buses that run on time and rubbish that is efficiently cleared are good things (in most smart cities, and in Rio as well, neither actually happens). There is, however, more to the good life than an ordered city. Human flourishing requires the existence of a sphere of life outside public scrutiny; not only within the intimacy of the home but also in semi-private spaces such as the workplace or the church or the pub. It’s that kind of space shielded from scrutiny that increasingly is vanishing. As Ceglowski observed, one of the features of the “new world of ambient surveillance” is that “we cannot opt out of it, any more than we might opt out of automobile culture by refusing to drive”. And that is possibly the most disturbing thought of all.

(Kenan Malik. www.theguardian.com, 19.05.2019. Adaptado.)