sight, hearing, smell, taste and even thoughts, feelings, needs, hopes,desires, touch, pain and pleasure are experienced by the controller as if theywere his own.  In the psychology text-book used in Swedish secondary schools. "Forsta sigsjaLv och andra" ("Understand Yourself and Others"), the research into linkingthe human brain with computers and that the consciousness can be stored ondisc and thus recalled after death is described. This concept can beassociated with the new technology which enables the controllers to linkthemselves into other people's neural systems and thereby experience theduplicated life of the target individuals, as their behaviour, experiences,feelings and entire consciousness. However, the researchers are able to linkthemselves into a human life as stored on a computer, whether the person isalive or dead. This is the pure "virtual reality". Such a transference of a person's life to the experience of another has beenviable for several decades. Alva Myrdal, a Swedish politician, discusses thisability in the state report SOU 1972:59. She writes, "The threat to humanintegrity is most apparent when the biological and psychological methods areset alongside modern technological equipment for the observation andsurveillance of individuals and groups, and for the compiling of storeddata....With the help of electronics it would also be feasible to designdifferent kinds of 'two-way' contacts and experiences of intimacy never beforeexperienced by man." | THE CONTROLLERS By way of illustration of the potential and use of this technology, we cancite the state inquiry SOU 1987:31 on integrity-violation in the informationsociety: "There are a great deal of research projects in which one needs to linktogether information from different points in time about the same person. Thiscan mean, for instance, following opinions during an election campaign,evaluating treatment and different methods within the health services,studying the importance of an individual's childhood and teenage years for hislater development.". What the Public Inquiry really means is that there are a greatmany research projects underway which are following human lives, concurrentlyor retrospectively, since the life of an individual is also stored on disc andcan be called up at will: these discs are acquired by the Public RecordsOffice (Riksarkivet) after death. This procedure was drawn up in 1986 after ameeting attended by Minister of Justice Sten Wickbom. Also presentwere Mats Borjesson It was at this meeting, that the member of parliament and secretary of theConservative Party, Gunnar Hokmark, in his opening speech revealed that wehere in Sweden are unique, in that there is so much information to compileon the citizens without their knowledge. Kurt Ove Johansson, member of theSwedish parliament mentioned his concern should the tabloids get hold of theconference agenda, and said: "There is a great danger that today's discussionson |
from the secret police, SAPO, the general director of thePublic Records Office, and a further 30 or so researchers, bureaucrats andpoliticians. The complete transcription of the meeting was recorded and isavailable in the parliamentary library. Gunnar Hokmark