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 * “__Counting Bodies Like Sheep To The Rhythm Of The War Drums__”**

Who would have thought that Hollywood hits were more like futuristic prophecies? We’ve all seen movies where man finally realizes that his enemy is not fellow man, but machine itself. Who will be the lone hero that serves mankind right and defeat the evil //behind// technology? At the rate technology is advancing, humans are becoming more dependable on machine than ever before. Sure, some technology will make the strain of physical activities a bit easier, but technology isn’t only a helping hand to painful physical activities. We’re past the industrial revolution days where technology was merely a way to speed up the production of goods. **Nowadays, technology has taken a whole new turn, to the point where it will think for you, plant opinions into your head, and focus your attention on whatever it pleases.** Sounds a lot like the mainstream media, right? That’s because they’re both in the same twisted system that many people are blind to see.

The internet is arguably man’s greatest invention. Information about almost anything in the world is available at everyone’s finger-tips. Technology isn’t always a bad thing if utilized for something productive. One can educate themselves about any topic imaginable without setting a foot outside of their home. The online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, continues to grow at a fast rate because of the freedom people have to edit pages, insert information, citations, etc. Despite what many think, Wikipedia is a great source for information because it is made up by people from both sexes, different races, religions, and ages rather than control-hungry corporate giants. “Wikipedia has arguably reached the status of global encyclopedia”, Noam Cohen of the New York Times says. "Wikipedia has reached Top Five world status among Web sites – with more than 330 million users ". Unfortunately, the incredibly fast rate at which Wikipedia was growing has slowed down incredibly to “protect the quality of articles”. Since not everyone can make edits to Wikipedia anymore, Facebook will gladly accept people with nothing better to do on the internet.

The obsession with social networks such as Facebook has got to make any awake person question things. For example: at face-value, Facebook is a great way to keep in touch with family, friends, co-workers and classmates. Facebook has a massive number of users and an incredible amount of information on each person. "The soft fleshed creatures that we Facebook users are will likely hate the new setting, at least at first. But robots are going to love it. As the largest social network on the web, with an incredible amount of time spent on the site by its users, Facebook holds a giant reservoir of demographic and sentiment data. It is the motherlode - and it's been inaccessible so far because everything has been private so far" says Marshall Kirkpatrick of the New York Times. Marshall Kirkpatrick addresses that the information has been inaccessible, without referring who it’s inaccessible to. Information on Facebook, or any other social networking site for that matter, is accessible to both Homeland Security and the FBI. Jana Winter, who is also a journalist for Fox News writes “Even U.S. citizens are having their Web profiles reviewed. People who buy one-way airline tickets, for example, are automatically flagged for security reasons, and authorities say a passenger’s name may be crosschecked against Facebook, YouTube or MySpace.” One might say they’re completely innocent and aren’t worried about the government keeping a close eye on them, but I think that most rational people would sit back and ask, “Do I really want a complete stranger armed with a badge knowing who I am, who my friends are, what I ate for breakfast and what I’m doing on the weekend?”

Keeping an uncomfortably close eye on people is one thing, but dumbing them down, feeding them one-sided news and constantly brainwashing the consumer is another thing. Television is an old invention which has grown to become a very common household item. With the invention and unstoppable growth of the internet, television is beginning to become less and less popular, even with the mandating of digital receivers and High Definition programming. When the number one weapon the mainstream media has was beginning to wear out and get old, you can bet anything you want that they’d go right back to the drawing board. Cable television is now available online. On the availability and accessibility of online television content, On the availability and accessibility of online television content, Stephen Lawson from the New York Times wrote, "’Bring more TV content, more easily to more people across platforms,’ is the first principle. Programmers should make their best and highest-rated content available online, where subscribers can watch for no additional charge over any broadband connection" The struggle and constant effort made by big media corporations and the United States government to push television in every direction that a person looks is a definite cause for suspicion.

Taking things at face-value can be dangerous, because the art of deception and manipulation is a reality. Our society is designed to outcast those who ask questions or to dismiss them as “tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy theorists”. Thanks to IBM, advanced research and technology has brought forth the ability to interpret a person’s DNA. Jeremy A. Kaplan of Fox News says “The DNA Transistor is a project from IBM Research that aims to advance personalized medicine, by making it simpler (and much cheaper) to read an individual's unique DNA sequence — the special combination of proteins that makes you unlike anyone else.” Being as though our government loves to monitor its people and keep a very close eye on everything, why not take the time to literally decode us? Fox News has already crafted a “not so trustworthy” reputation throughout its many years of broadcasting news, so when they tell us that the DNA Transistor’s purpose is to advance personalized medicine; a rational mind has to look at all the possibilities.

Some might applaud IBM’s research and call it revolutionary. Others might skip the applauding and just call it revolutionary. With such extensive and dangerous technology, one has to worry that it is in the hands of a company that committed Nazi war crimes. During Nazi Germany, Herman Hollerith, founder of IBM, rented punch card computers that were made for the US Census Bureau, to use for concentration camps and many other sick operations. This is a perfect example of technology being used to track and classify humans as if they were sheep.

Sometimes people forget that weapons are a huge part of technology. Maybe it’s because people tend to forget their second amendment, and in most cases the rest of the amendments. The military of course, is constantly advancing their weapons technology to create a brutal and devastating arsenal. One of the latest monster weapons is the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. It is a 30,000 pound bomb that has the capabilities of obliterating targets 200 feet below the ground. “‘Concerning the areas where this weapon can be put to use, Kurt Nimmo of Infowars.com says “This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran,’ ABC notes.” Just by observing the United States’ advancement’s in all kinds of technology, your mind can almost unveil an outline of the plans our government is waiting to deploy. By using the mainstream media, Americans were convinced that Iraq had nuclear weapons, following our president into an endless war. Right about now, it seems as though an attack on Iran is imminent and American’s are buying into the propaganda once again.

In the end, technology can either be used to turn you into yet another sheep or it can be used to open your mind and allow you to think outside the box we call a television. Everyone should do more thinking and form their own opinions instead of rolling over on demand. These days, it’s easy to spread your word and provide the ignorant with truth. Maybe if technology was used for spreading truth, there would be less problems in the world.