Oysters

I have finally been forced to succumb to what I had been refusing to accept as a matter of principle. The shellfish that has been forced at us for some time now. Gradually they have been removing the means to survive without one. They make it all sound like such a good idea, save time, save money, save a soul etc etc. They have now removed all means for me to live in this city without that damn little shellfish.
It is now no longer possible to buy weekly tube travel cards. The only way one can buy a weekly travel card is if they have an oyster card!
Oyster is the smarter, faster, easier way to travel round London. Oyster is designed to make your life easier, blah blah blah.......
Basically the London Underground are trying to cut down on the number of paper tickets used. Oyster is an electronic swipe card that carries your ticket information. You can top it up online, or at auto machines at the station. You can use pre-pay that will just subtract the amount of your journey from your balance, or you can buy weekly, monthly or annual travel cards on it. You just swipe your card on the way in and out of the tube station. It sounds like a great idea, saves time by allowing you to not have to queue up for tickets in the morning etc etc etc.
I have never bothered with one of these and have stuck to using paper weekly tickets. Gradually though they made it harder for you to do this; by not making paper weekly tickets available from the auto machine etc. As of the 25th of September, you will now no longer be able to buy paper weekly, monthly or yearly travel cards, they will only be available to Oyster card holders. So now I have an Oyster card and will be able to enjoy all the benefits associated.
Transport for London and anyone whom they may care to share the information with, will now have a record of every single public transport journey that I make. If ever the time should come when I need to claim I was in a place that I was not, there will be evidence to prove I am lying. Now, I am not ever likely to claim I was somewhere I was not, but is that really the point?
The Oyster card is indeed a convenient way of ticketing, yet in our age of ever increasing dependence on technologies, each new convenience is also as system of monitoring and control. We might be 20 years after George Orwell first predicted; but the Big Brother state is looming.
Conservatives will suggest that if one is not doing anything wrong, then one has nothing to worry about, and what does it matter if there is a record of one's whereabouts. Those who are doing wrong will be caught quicker and the precious lives of the law abiding citizens of the free world will be saved. That may be the case but where to we go from here?
Once something is routine in our lives it is easy to consciously forget about it. We are becoming nearer to a cashless society; we use our debit and credit cards with increasing frequency. Each time we make a transaction there is a record of what we bought, where, when and how much. At this stage the bank only has these records, but how long before it is decided it is acceptable for other institutions to gain access to these. Already, companies use store cards to create a psychological profile of you based on the groceries you buy, with this information they will directly market products to you that they think you will be interested in buying.
The more technology eases our lives, the more our lives are recorded. This information is not readily available to anyone at the moment, soon it could be. Knowledge is power.
It's not such a bad thing though, with advancements in cloning technology, I could create an exact DNA replica of myself, then with all the information about my life, purchases, movements and behaviours recorded, I could program this clone to behave just like me. I could then send it out to work while I lie on a beach in Thailand.
Although, with a sample of my DNA, anyone could do this! They could kill me and replace me with my replica! Maybe they already have!
The possibilities are endless.