Censorship: The future of books

Censorship Of Books

In the bill of rights we are promised freedom of speech and press. Do books fall under this category? I would have to say they do. I researched a lot. The government hasn’t banned a book that we have knowledge of in three decades. Everything I could find on censorship lead me to government conspiracy and cover ups. Well, I thought I could talk that subject to death. We have to admit we have all heard and are aware that our government does things that we are unaware of. This assignment was taking the concepts that we all know about our subjects, and be original and think about the future. So I think we have a little knowledge on the past and present. What I got from the assignment sheet was, take this concept further. Think creatively, what does the future of censorship look like, or what could it look like? I started to brainstorm, I looked across the room and my adorable cat Azule was cocking his head at me in his curious way. He jumped down from my book shelf and his tags jingled like they always do. But his Home Again tag caught my eye. When he was just a kitten I had a tiny micro-chip put in him so that if he ever got out, they could pull his file and see exactly where he was. Yes, I “GPS’ed” my cat. I remembered an article I read while I was sitting in the doctor’s office recently. I read that there are hundreds of hospitals and doctor’s offices that are getting the equipment to locate or scan a patient that has chosen to have the chip implanted in them.
Why would anyone do this? I Googled Home Again, I got a ton of results. These chips are actually starting to be offered to parents of newborn babies. They are also being implanted in the devopmentally disabled. They have started to offer these chips to the families of Alzheimer’s patients. Basically, anyone who is a risk to wander off and not know how to communicate where they belong or even who they are. These chips have the capacity to hold all of our personal information. If we allow them to, they could replace the need for ID’s, health alert bracelets, even credit cards. So why do I think that this has anything to do with censorship? What if the government decided to code books in stores and newspapers and any form media by what they think is appropriate for individuals. So if my eleven year old went to the library and tried to check out or even read a book that has been coded as adult content or violent, someone would quickly remove the book from her hands and say “Alexis, you are only eleven, you can’t read this.” This is a real possibility, on a YouTube video I watched while brainstorming the idea, that within ten years these chips could have the ability to control high blood pressure, and even give a deaf person their hearing back. So why couldn’t they control what books we can read or buy. So, someone who was doing a paper on corruption in our government; let’s say this person was a perceived risk. They may have aspirations to try and change things. This person has potential to be a real leader. If the government that is in place now doesn’t have the same ideals and feels that this person shouldn’t be able to access anything to educate themselves on corruption; or any other media that could possibly be used to get information. They could just stonewall all access to any book, webpage, magazine or even the daily paper. I know that it sounds far- fetched but what if this was what censorship is going to look like in twenty years. How would you like it if you tried to sit down and watch CNN and parts of the news just blue screened in front of you? What if you never knew any other way, like the infants that they are praying on their parent’s worst fears, like our child being a victim of kidnapping or getting lost, or falling in water when they can’t swim? They are promising safety, in almost every aspect of our lives. They are telling us that they will always be watching, we will all be living a safer life; but what are they not telling us, constant monitoring, would we still be free? Could we even really stop the companies from sending out information that influence’s how we think? If they could get these chips into everyone, who would be watching the watchers? Who would protect our civil liberties then?


Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. — The first article of the Bill of Rights
Isn’t the idea of this a contradiction?

Even in the era of controversies, “The Patriot Act”, etc. We could be here all day naming them all. But, talking about it gets us no where! As a democracy are we really allowing this to happen right in front of our own eyes?