THE PRISONER (2009)
Micky DuPree
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I can honestly say that I liked the new _Prisoner_ more that I expected
to, but I expected something more Hollywood and obvious than the
original, not something *less* Hollywood and more obscure, so it's at
least different, which is hard to do these days. I think it genuinely
qualifies as a "re-imagining" rather than as a remake. The production
that the new _Prisoner_ put me most in mind of was not the old
_Prisoner_, but the earlier episodes of _Charlie Jade_: the stranger in
an inexplicably strange and sometimes hostile land, the slow pace, the
sense of the futility of action against a monolithic corporate force
devoted to surveillance and control, the African desert location
shooting.
It bothered me at the beginning that No.6 wasn't asking the questions I
would ask about physical setting and sustainability, such as where do
the food, raw materials, and manufactured goods come from. However, by
the end, this story turned into a more abstract framing of the question
of freedom than the original _Prisoner_ was. Since this Village seems
to be entirely a frame of mind (presumably aided by drugs, conditioning,
and a Matrix-y groupthink enabled by the pill of "unknown compounds"),
it didn't bother me at the end that No.6 hadn't been pointing out the
constellations of the stars to prove his location or staying awake at
night to find out how they were transporting food into the city. In an
induced fugue state, those issues might not seem important.
The original _Prisoner_ started out rooted in Cold War paranoia,
pointing out the irony of any ideology that has to destroy freedom in
order to save it, and has to terrorize in order to secure. The new
_Prisoner_ isn't overtly political. The Village is run by an ill-
defined corporation rather than a suspected government arm. The enemy
seems to be surveillance, suspicion, and subjugation in general.
The contrarian in me is disappointed that the new No.6 submits in the
end, although I assume the point is to be a cautionary tale about the
seductive nature of fixing imperfection through imposed order. Problem
is, they make a stronger utilitarian case for the Villagers being better
off in the Village than they make for free will on principle. At least
I hope that the point of making 4.5 hours of programming wasn't to say
that the right treatment for drug addicts and the mentally ill is to
send their subconscious minds to the Village where they can be happy
(and yet ill at ease in their sub-subconscious), and thereby live
economically productive lives in the real world. Nevertheless, the
miniseries makes the case that the Village is for the best, and never
makes a counter-argument that sticks. If that's not what the creators
intended, then they failed even by their own internal goals.
When I saw No.2's wife, I thought the whole shebang was going to turn
mystical at the end, and I can't discount that possibility: the Dreamer
Who Dreams the Dream of the World. Unlike in the fragments of Eastern
mythology that I know, though, the Village seems to require collective
maintenance to sustain it. The principal Dreamer isn't enough all on
his or her own. Inattention and lack of maintenance by ordinary
Villagers leads to holes in the fabric of the Village, and those whose
entire virtual existence was born in the Village can vanish with no
real-world counterpart.
I had been hoping, though, that the new Village was going to turn out to
be a cult born of the children of the original Villagers. The Village
would have been originally started as a sham, but the children who grew
up in it would know no other reality, and would have been taught all
their lives to repudiate attacks on that world view, even turning on
their parents as necessary. They would have some supernatural
explanation for the appearance of Newcomers. But alas, such was not to
be.
I wasn't very emotionally engaged. No.6 seemed too passive at the
beginning to grab me. None of the connections he made with people
seemed to be genuine, so my heartstrings weren't pulled. Betrayal and
failure seemed like foregone conclusions, so there was no suspense. I
had no sympathy for the family of No.2. I might have had sympathy for
the son had he not seemed sociopathic in his reaction to the lover that
he could not keep.
I'd have to watch the whole thing again to test the conclusions I formed
at the end against the early information of the beginning, and I'm not
inclined to go to that effort. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I'm not
wowed by it either. I would think its appeal to be narrower than that
of the original series, which was more engaging, more accessible, and
faster in pace. If asked for a recommendation, I'd have to ask whether
the prospective viewer has a taste for languid intellectual puzzles.
-Micky
Anim8rFSK
MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
> If asked for a recommendation, I'd have to ask whether
> the prospective viewer has a taste for languid intellectual puzzles.
And if they do have a taste for the intellectual, tell them to stay far
away from this mess.
--
Stargate Universe SGU: It puts the "U" in "SUCKS"!
It's the show 'Defiling Gravity' would be if DG had more regulars,
fewer abortions, worse writers, and no budget for lighting.
Remember, you can't spell "disgust" without SGU!
Bob LeBlawgh
> In article <heap4k$q77$1...@pcls6.std.com>,
> MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply (Micky DuPree) wrote:
>
>> If asked for a recommendation, I'd have to ask whether
>> the prospective viewer has a taste for languid intellectual puzzles.
>
> And if they do have a taste for the intellectual, tell them to stay far
> away from this mess.
>
--
Bob LaBlawgh
�It's never too late to have a happy childhood.�
Moor Larkin
wrote: >I'd have to watch the whole thing again to test the
conclusions I formed at the end against the early information of the
beginning, and I'm not inclined to go to that effort.
To check out if you really liked your dream: It's re-running starting
this Sunday, Nov. 22, on AMC (two hours a night at 10 pm for three
consecutive Sundays).
Jeremy Billones
> Spoilers for the 2009 miniseries _The Prisoner_.
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> I can honestly say that I liked the new _Prisoner_ more that I expected
> to, but I expected something more Hollywood and obvious than the
> original, not something *less* Hollywood and more obscure, so it's at
> least different, which is hard to do these days.
Well of course it wasn't Hollywood -- it was British.
> It bothered me at the beginning that No.6 wasn't asking the questions I
> would ask about physical setting and sustainability, such as where do
> the food, raw materials, and manufactured goods come from.
That would have been a good line of thought towards figuring out an
escape attempt by following the route backwards, but (a) I don't recall
Six in the original doing so, either, and more importantly (b) that would
have given away the twist.
> it didn't bother me at the end that No.6 hadn't been pointing out the
> constellations of the stars to prove his location...
I wonder how many people in 2009 can do that. (I can't. And NewSix wasn't
a super spy who can pull such abilities out of his... character sheet.)
> The original _Prisoner_ started out rooted in Cold War paranoia,
> pointing out the irony of any ideology that has to destroy freedom in
> order to save it, and has to terrorize in order to secure. The new
> _Prisoner_ isn't overtly political. The Village is run by an ill-
> defined corporation rather than a suspected government arm. The enemy
> seems to be surveillance, suspicion, and subjugation in general.
What's weird is that this is, I think, the same shift that the remake of
The Manchurian Candidate did so poorly. (I haven't seen it; I don't think
that's a spoiler.)
> The contrarian in me is disappointed that the new No.6 submits in the
> end, although I assume the point is to be a cautionary tale about the
> seductive nature of fixing imperfection through imposed order.
Did _1984_ create the genre? If so, you don't really get to complain when
the bad guys win :)
It's more rare in supernatural horror -- I've seen some I liked and some I
didn't. For me, it boils down to fairness -- did our hero(ine) have a chance
to win, and did they succeed or fail on the basis of their own actions?
I think NewSix could have "won", but chose not to, and that choice was
justified by his established character. It worked for me. (And it would
have been really interesting to see what choice John Drake would have made,
in the same circumstances. I suspect he would have found a third option.)
> Problem
> is, they make a stronger utilitarian case for the Villagers being better
> off in the Village than they make for free will on principle. At least
> I hope that the point of making 4.5 hours of programming wasn't to say
> that the right treatment for drug addicts and the mentally ill is to
> send their subconscious minds to the Village where they can be happy
> (and yet ill at ease in their sub-subconscious), and thereby live
> economically productive lives in the real world. Nevertheless, the
> miniseries makes the case that the Village is for the best, and never
> makes a counter-argument that sticks. If that's not what the creators
> intended, then they failed even by their own internal goals.
Two things.
First, I think this is a case where being coy about the real-world mechanism
is being treated by the author as a 'get out of jail free' card. One key
point of contention would be informed consent -- if a real world person
knew of the treatment and consented to it, it would be OK. And except for
NewSix, we never see any of the other characters presented with that
choice... *but we're assuming they were not*. For someone who is incapable
of giving informed consent, the rules are different. (And the latter case
may be, deliberately, more common than the former) But at the end of the
day, all we can do is speculate on that one.
Second, by setting 90% of the series in this shared unconsciousness, you
have another out that is much more problematic: can your unconscious self
consent to anything? Allegorically, sure -- a physical action Village!NewSix
takes could represent a decision that NY!NewSix makes. But in a narrative
where you can ask a question of both, what does it mean if they give different
answers?
> I had been hoping, though, that the new Village was going to turn out to
> be a cult born of the children of the original Villagers. The Village
> would have been originally started as a sham, but the children who grew
> up in it would know no other reality, and would have been taught all
> their lives to repudiate attacks on that world view, even turning on
> their parents as necessary. They would have some supernatural
> explanation for the appearance of Newcomers. But alas, such was not to
> be.
Have I ever asked what you thought of M. Night Shyamalan's work? I'd
ask about a specific movie, but that would be a spoiler by inference.
> I wasn't very emotionally engaged. No.6 seemed too passive at the
> beginning to grab me. None of the connections he made with people
> seemed to be genuine, so my heartstrings weren't pulled. Betrayal and
> failure seemed like foregone conclusions, so there was no suspense. I
> had no sympathy for the family of No.2. I might have had sympathy for
> the son had he not seemed sociopathic in his reaction to the lover that
> he could not keep.
I don't want to knock Jim Caviezel's acting here. Lord knows I've seen
enough of that the past few weeks, most of which boils down to 'He's
not Patrick McGoohan', and that's kind of an unfair standard. In
particular, given that his character does give in in the end a 'weaker'
portrayal makes sense. But (I think) he interacted with three young single
women in the show, and I never got the sense that he was more or less
attracted to any of them. Was he supposed to be in love with 313 enough
for that to be a driving motivator for him to stay? (It seemed to be for
her.) Or was it merely altruism to fix a broken woman he knew who
needed his help? He certainly slept with Lucy quickly enough, and
while they tried to use Voice of the Author to claim that was
Village!chemically induced, they are by definition an unreliable narrarator.
(Especially when Two needled (ahem) 313 about it. It would work either way.)
As for the son, he brings whole new meaning to the term 'birth defect'.
> I'd have to watch the whole thing again to test the conclusions I formed
> at the end against the early information of the beginning, and I'm not
> inclined to go to that effort. I'm not sorry I watched it, but I'm not
> wowed by it either.
That sounds about right. But the one big complaint I do have is that I
don't think the earlier episodes remain internally consistent with the
final reveal. (Seriously, who blew up his NY apartment? The only
person with a motive is the author, who knew it was Dramatically Appropriate.
Same with the Village Diner.)
> I would think its appeal to be narrower than that
> of the original series, which was more engaging, more accessible, and
> faster in pace.
Huh. There are many kind words I would use to describe the original Prisoner.
"Accessible" would not have been one of them.
--
Jeremy Billones jbil...@gmail.com
"You would flirt with chaos, destruction -- with war. For the sake of this
one, wounded soul?"
"For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life. The way I
see it, there's nothing else worth fighting a war for."
Anlatt the Builder
In the original, Six had no reason to do so, because there was no
pretext that the Village was the only place in the world, or that
there was no contact between the Village and the outside world.
Moor Larkin
> Huh. There are many kind words I would use to describe the original Prisoner. "Accessible" would not have been one of them.
Huh? Have you actually watched the series recently? Other than the
final two episodes I mean? I sometimes think people just read about
this show nowadays and never actually watch it....
What was *not accessible* about any of it? Angry secret agent gets
abducted... cue lots of adventures in a mysterious village community
with the occasional breakout....... Episodes with vignettes of simple
mind-control sci-fi, such as dream control or behaviour
modification..... simples.....
The reason McGoohan could get away with being so obscurely intricate
in the final two episodes was because he had made the preceeding 15 so
accessible. Just because you have to think about those final two
doen't make the series itself any less accessible for heavens sake.
It strikes me from reading reviews of the rebooted version (no show in
the UK yet) that the 2009 model does exactly the opposite. It is
stupidly obscure until the last half-hour, when it then makes an
attempt to tie things up with a bow. Unfortunatley it appears to rely
on the boring plot device that none of what you have seen is real
anyhow, everyone is asleep.... so who bloody cares what happened in
the preceeding five and a half hours anyhow..... :-)))))
Dewey
news:14d2c53e-c15f-4b1a...@m25g2000yqc.googlegroups.com:
Exactly.
--
"You are, number 6"
- The New Number 2
Micky DuPree
<jbil...@gmail.com> writes:
: On 2009-11-22, Micky DuPree <MDu...@theworld.com.snip.to.reply>
: wrote:
:: I can honestly say that I liked the new _Prisoner_ more that I
:: expected to, but I expected something more Hollywood and obvious than
:: the original, not something *less* Hollywood and more obscure, so
:: it's at least different, which is hard to do these days.
:
: Well of course it wasn't Hollywood -- it was British.
It's a relative comparison, though. I see more and more Hollywood-ish
influence on British productions these days. Sadly, as the production
values go up, the content seems to become more superficial and "on the
nose," which is traditionally a Hollywood problem.
But something that's set mostly in a mental plane, which the narrative
never bothers to explain in any detail, is nowhere near acceptable to
Hollywood, not unless it's full of violence to distract viewers from
asking questions.
The original _Prisoner_ was arguably one of those "mid-Atlantic"
productions that ITC was famous for, created with both the U.S. and U.K.
markets in mind, and with a creator who was arguably a U.S.-U.K. hybrid
himself.
:: It bothered me at the beginning that No.6 wasn't asking the questions
:: I would ask about physical setting and sustainability, such as where
:: do the food, raw materials, and manufactured goods come from.
:
: That would have been a good line of thought towards figuring out an
: escape attempt by following the route backwards ...
And even towards figuring out where the Village was and challenging the
postulate that the Village was all there was. If the food has to be
brought in from somewhere else, then the Village cannot be all there is.
: ... but (a) I don't recall Six in the original doing so, either ...
As Anlatt the Builder says, the original Villagers never claimed that
the Village was all there was. The masters freely admitted the
existence of the outside world.
: ... and more importantly (b) that would have given away the twist.
True. Besides, as I came to realize, once you accept that the Village
is all mental and not at the level of true consciousness, then you can
explain a lot of behavior away as obeying, not logic, but dream-logic.
Haven't you ever dreamed that something made sense within the confines
of the dream, even though it was a skewed way of looking at things when
you were fully awake?
:: ... it didn't bother me at the end that No.6 hadn't been pointing out
:: the constellations of the stars to prove his location ...
:
: I wonder how many people in 2009 can do that.
True, I can't identify anything in the Southern Hemisphere (which is
where most of the location shooting took place :^) ). When most of the
population is living under brightly lit urban skies, astronomy isn't an
easy pastime to practice.
But there's a larger point here about No.6 not taking the steps that
would be available to him to do a reality check on what was being told
to him in the Village. Constellations and physical economy are just
some of the material clues. No.6 also did not avail himself of social
clues. He didn't take the exclusive use of the English language to be a
major clue as to his location or the identity of his captors. He didn't
think it interesting that there were different accents in the spoken
language. He didn't make anything of the fact that the vehicles were
right-hand drive.
:: The new _Prisoner_ isn't overtly political. The Village is run by an
:: ill-defined corporation rather than a suspected government arm. The
:: enemy seems to be surveillance, suspicion, and subjugation in
:: general.
:
: What's weird is that this is, I think, the same shift that the remake
: of The Manchurian Candidate did so poorly. (I haven't seen it; I
: don't think that's a spoiler.)
I haven't seen it either. It is hard for me to accept, though, given
the story's premise that this kind of surveillance and subjugation is
possible, that governments across the world wouldn't be at the forefront
of research and applications, rather than it being the seemingly sole
province of a vague corporation whose profitability isn't accounted for.
:: The contrarian in me is disappointed that the new No.6 submits in the
:: end, although I assume the point is to be a cautionary tale about the
:: seductive nature of fixing imperfection through imposed order.
:
: Did _1984_ create the genre? If so, you don't really get to complain
: when the bad guys win :)
Depends on whether you consider _Brave New World_ a look at the same
problem approached from the other direction (western decadence as just
another form of control). But since the immediate predecessor to _The
Prisoner_ (2009) is _The Prisoner_ (1967), I think I'm entitled to my
disappointment.
: It's more rare in supernatural horror -- I've seen some I liked and
: some I didn't.
Straight-ahead horror and I just don't mix well. Either I'm not scared
and everything looks overwrought to me, or else, or rare occasion, I am
scared, and I think, "Shit, why am I watching something that scares me?"
: For me, it boils down to fairness -- did our hero(ine) have a chance
: to win, and did they succeed or fail on the basis of their own
: actions? I think NewSix could have "won", but chose not to, and that
: choice was justified by his established character. It worked for me.
I'm not saying New-Six's choice was internally inconsistent. I'm just
saying I'd be more interested in a story where he did "win" (although it
would have been an engaging modern twist if he had had to deal with and
live with the fallout of the real-world Villagers becoming unraveled in
the absence of the discipline of being subjected to the Village).
It was more interesting to me what happened to this version's No.2, who
was more than ready to leave the Village by the end, although not ready
to subvert it. It reminded me a little of the Mel Gibson film _The
Bounty_, because the film painted a more nuanced portrait of Captain
Bligh than it did of mutineer Fletcher Christian.
The sequel (there won't be one, but if there were to be one) should be
the identification of Curtis and Helen as "flawed" beings by Michael's
version of Summakor, and their forcible return to the Village, where
they are programmed to think that their time as No.2 and M2 were just
antisocial delusions of grandeur. No one resigns from Summakor.
: (And it would have been really interesting to see what choice John
: Drake would have made, in the same circumstances. I suspect he would
: have found a third option.)
As some of the posters pointed out, the original No.6 won the Village
election, and even discovered himself to be "No.1," and yet he rejected
all attempts to coopt him.
: First, I think this is a case where being coy about the real-world
: mechanism is being treated by the author as a 'get out of jail free'
: card. One key point of contention would be informed consent -- if a
: real world person knew of the treatment and consented to it, it would
: be OK. And except for NewSix, we never see any of the other
: characters presented with that choice... *but we're assuming they were
: not*.
I believe that's not true of 313/Sarah/Childhood Trauma Victim. Towards
the end, her Village persona starts to realize the truth of her
situation in the real world. With what rationality she has in the
Village, but is losing in the physical world, she chooses to cling to
the Village and to No.6, despite the sadness this causes her.
: For someone who is incapable of giving informed consent, the rules are
: different. (And the latter case may be, deliberately, more common
: than the former) But at the end of the day, all we can do is
: speculate on that one.
True, but given the miraculous real-world results that Village therapy
can effect, you'd think that Summakor could afford to go public and ask
for the informed consent of (and payment from) the legal guardians of
those who are non compos mentis.
I think we were supposed to set all such concrete real-world concerns
aside and see the conflict as entirely abstract. Napoleon is credited
with saying that history is a lie agreed upon. I'd say that social
reality is itself a group fabrication. Every family is its own Village.
Every church, every ideology, every government, every friendship, every
group identity you can name is its own Village. You can challenge the
underlying assumptions of that reality, and you can question the
benefits that are supposed to be derived from that reality, but there's
usually a human cost to the destruction of even oppressive world views
and group identities. (This is the one thing I find fascinating about
the otherwise overly glib and wildly plotted Fox series _Lie to Me_.
Cal Lightman is the No.6 in every single group he has even a marginal
membership in. His ability and willingness to expose lies make him
almost unfit for human society.)
: Second, by setting 90% of the series in this shared unconsciousness,
: you have another out that is much more problematic: can your
: unconscious self consent to anything? Allegorically, sure -- a
: physical action Village!NewSix takes could represent a decision that
: NY!NewSix makes. But in a narrative where you can ask a question of
: both, what does it mean if they give different answers?
Did we see such an instance in _The Prisoner_ (2009)? Without checking,
my impression is that the New York sides of people converged with their
Village selves rather than disagreed with them, and that that was by
design. Even the almost incoherent Sarah grabbed hold of Michael near
the end.
:: I had been hoping, though, that the new Village was going to turn out
:: to be a cult born of the children of the original Villagers. [....]
:: But alas, such was not to be.
:
: Have I ever asked what you thought of M. Night Shyamalan's work?
I checked the IMDb. The only work of his that I've seen (most of) is
_Unbreakable_. It was O.K., neither really good nor really bad. I know
the tag line to _The Sixth Sense_, of course. It's not calculated to
get me to watch it. The plot summaries of the others make me think I
might like _Praying with Anger_ and _Wide Awake_.
:: I wasn't very emotionally engaged. No.6 seemed too passive at the
:: beginning to grab me. None of the connections he made with people
:: seemed to be genuine, so my heartstrings weren't pulled. Betrayal
:: and failure seemed like foregone conclusions, so there was no
:: suspense. I had no sympathy for the family of No.2. I might have
:: had sympathy for the son had he not seemed sociopathic in his
:: reaction to the lover that he could not keep.
:
: I don't want to knock Jim Caviezel's acting here. Lord knows I've
: seen enough of that the past few weeks, most of which boils down to
: 'He's not Patrick McGoohan', and that's kind of an unfair standard.
: In particular, given that his character does give in in the end a
: 'weaker' portrayal makes sense.
Exactly. I don't think that my displeasure with the outcome has
anything to do with the acting. It's obviously all on the pages of the
script, and the actors and the director delivered what the writer
wanted. The only open question to me was the editing, but I think that
the story arrived where the writer wanted it to, so any quibbles he
might have about the path taken remain just quibbles.
: But (I think) he interacted with three young single women in the show,
: and I never got the sense that he was more or less attracted to any of
: them.
Remind me who the third was. 554?
: Was he supposed to be in love with 313 enough for that to be a driving
: motivator for him to stay? (It seemed to be for her.) Or was it
: merely altruism to fix a broken woman he knew who needed his help?
We know he was physically attracted to 313. His Schizoid self, which
was represented as the id-like emotions of lust and revenge, made sexual
advances to 313. In New York, I think he was moved on the human level
by her plight. There wasn't much left of her that could cope with
reality.
: He certainly slept with Lucy quickly enough, and while they tried to
: use Voice of the Author to claim that was Village!chemically induced,
: they are by definition an unreliable narrarator. (Especially when Two
: needled (ahem) 313 about it. It would work either way.)
In the Village, the story was that it was all chemically induced. In
New York, I have to wonder if Summakor just took their knowledge of
Michael's subconscious and either "designed" Lucy so that she would push
all the right buttons of attraction in him, or else genuinely did a
computer dating number on him and came up with his ideal match from the
Summakor database.
: As for the son, he brings whole new meaning to the term 'birth
: defect'.
Heh. It's interesting that the son manifested his father's
dissatisfaction so overtly all along. I wonder what No.2/Curtis made of
that, since he knew the truth.
I also wonder how many other inhabitants of the Village were wholly
virtual. I've heard some claim that only Eleven-Twelve was, but I don't
see why that should be. Since they were constantly matchmaking everyone
in the Village and stressing the importance of family, it seems unlikely
that every child in the Village had a real-world counterpart.
: But the one big complaint I do have is that I don't think the earlier
: episodes remain internally consistent with the final reveal.
Possibly not, but I'm not going to invest the time to rewatch.
: (Seriously, who blew up his NY apartment? The only person with a
: motive is the author, who knew it was Dramatically Appropriate.
I thought it was Lucy, because she lost the illusion of the Village
while she was 415. Having lost the ability to hang onto the illusion,
she lost the mental discipline to keep her "flaw" in the real world at
bay. Evidently, that flaw involved violent destruction.
: Same with the Village Diner.)
That I can't tell you for sure, but the more that people question the
Village, the more the substantiveness of the Village suffers, albeit
usually in a slower, more erosive manner.
:: I would think its appeal to be narrower than that of the original
:: series, which was more engaging, more accessible, and faster in pace.
:
: Huh. There are many kind words I would use to describe the original
: Prisoner. "Accessible" would not have been one of them.
Again, it's a relative comparison. Maybe a more precise way of putting
it would be that the original _Prisoner_ is less inaccessible than the
new one. At least when the original _Prisoner_ had its characters
indulge in dream manipulation, it did so by spelling it out for the
audience. While many viewers guessed that the new Village was all a
dream, that wasn't made clear until the end.
Worse, the biggest mystery wasn't in the content of the new _Prisoner_,
but in its storytelling structure, where one is forced to intuit that
the New York story is not taking place in flashbacks, nor in
flashforwards, but simultaneously with the story taking place in the
Village. My memory may be failing me, but I don't think the original
_Prisoner_ ever resorted to such non-mainstream techniques.
-Micky
Brian Watson
> It is hard for me to accept, though, given
> the story's premise that this kind of surveillance and subjugation is
> possible, that governments across the world wouldn't be at the
> forefront of research and applications, rather than it being the
> seemingly sole province of a vague corporation whose profitability
> isn't accounted for.
But if a corporation serves governments' needs to keep the populace quiet
and compliant and "occupied" mentally, it gains tacit trans-border
acceptance.
Chatrooms and newsgroups, anyone?
--
Brian
"Fight like the Devil, die like a gentleman."
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