This TED talk is about how the internet enables intimacy — but in the last few minutes Stefana Broadbent veers into a keen analysis of the state, and the corporate and government desire to say who has the right to “self-determine” where our attention is focused.  She points out that security and safety have always been justification for more social control — and if real security and safety concerns can do it — how much more might state-engineered security and safety concerns be able to accomplish?  As noted in the blog today, the government needs a newer and “improved” Patriot Act and tracking devices in all our cell phones.   If Americans focused their attention on real relationships instead of government constructs, the real world and actual fact instead of national theories and nationalistic fantasies,  the state, particularly D.C., might indeed wither.

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