(9 January 2023 (2023!)) The title is "Horrors to be Faced by Our Descendants". Maybe that's too generous given the speed of technological development.
The arsenal of recording technology (cameras, microphones, etc.) will expand and expand into territories not even considerable to any human. Currently these technologies fulfill a want to immortalise things perceptible to our senses, whether it be a family photo or CCTV footage. But technology does not care about limiting its sensory scope to that of ours. Utilising technology, or perhaps AI indepentently with itself, new senses will be discovered that can be used to mash privacy's corpse into a pulp. Now I'm not talking about the enhancement of our senses, such as with a microscope, but completely new, incomprehensible, and esoteric senses that will have names so obscure that they will be 20-letter-long Greek scientific names.
As I alluded to in a previous post, there could be snapshots of the entire world similar to our Google Earth where users can zoom into any spot, including the insides of houses, and see exactly what was happening at that time. There could even be snapshots of the insides of one's brain, with which the agent could view not only the current thoughts but literally everything about the victim.
How the fuck are you supposed to defend against that? Shoot yourself? I'm sure they could still gather a huge amount of information, even if you got someone to chop your brain into Himalayan sea salt.
It's getting to the point where the possibility for one's experiences to be "frozen", locking them into a permanent, inescapable prison for much, much longer than their life seems on the horizon, along with the possibility for that but the addition of infinite pain, just like hell, seems somehow closer. The book "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", the concept of which at first sounds like a fantastical albeit impossible horror story, seems indeed possible. Very possible. Worse: this won't even have a purpose over pure sadism if the previously mentioned surveillance technology becomes real. I wouldn't wish it on Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc..
The judge who smacks down his gavel proclaiming the legality of such a measure for the seemingly humane purpose of punishing the criminal but not shortening his life in the real world will understand the slippery slope he is enacting. He will understand this Pandora's Box more than anyone, and yet he will feel justified in his actions, and he will sleep well at night.
A singular experience of a hell like that, an actual Hell, feels to me (or at least to my empathy) more of an evil than the extermination of the human race...
Technology is no wonder anymore.