Surveillance Society--Science Fiction or Our Certain Future?

As I watched the new PBS movie The Last Enemy, I couldn't help but feel a certain uncomfortable mixture of resignation and dread. Not only does the movie depict a total surveillance society, but it does so quite convincingly. It makes you wonder. Are scenarios like those depicted in the film simply science fiction, or are they a glimpse into an inevitable future?

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My name is Amanda, and I am a workaholic.

-- a recovering workaholic, that is.

I used to live and breathe work; when I wasn't physically at the office, I was there in my mind -- wondering if the email I sent struck the right tone, strategizing how to get through the next day's to-do list. The smallest annoyance could send me into a fury. (I hear I was a lot of fun to live with.) more

I watched The Man, His World, His Music a few years earlier as part of my research for my own book about Johnny Cash and found it the single most mesmerizing work I encountered about Cash. It stands with Christopher Wren's Winners Got Scars Too as the best at capturing Cash at his height of his first comeback in the late 1960s because it shows Cash's appeal by letting Cash, his music, and er, his world speak for themselves.

Indeed, what strikes me the most about The Man are two related aspects: the lack of narration and the thematic coverage Elfstrom provides. He takes us from subject to subject, place to place, and by the time we finish, we get an alternative but persuasive idea about Cash: that he is complicated. We see little of the darkness that is at the center of the Johnny Cash narrative (and the movie, Walk the Line), but rather a man who engages a variety of people and ideas. He talks to fans, aspiring songwriters, Bob Dylan, producers, and reporters with equal ease. more

Before we get into R.E.M.'s performance on Austin City Limits, let's put my opinions and ramblings into a little bit of perspective.

I am 31 years old. When I was a freshman in high school, R.E.M's Out of Time came out. This was also the year that Nirvana's Nevermind was released, Pearl Jam's Ten, U2's Achtung Baby and Sonic Youth's Dirty (well, that came out in 1992, but close enough). What a collection, right? Even as my musical tastes have grown in all sorts of strange directions, I can't deny that this batch of records defined the type of music fan that I continue to be.

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For me, "base camp" is the spot where we park our Volvo, pitch our two-room tent and roast marshmallows over an open fire. The only sherpas involved are me and my husband, who often end up carrying our kids' day packs back from strolls to "the summit," no matter what promises were made when we set out.

Everest, it is not.

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