Noticed three iris-readers in the U.S. Customs and Imigrations hall in Montreal. Did not notice anyone using the service. The future is here and while people might be given the option to go through lots of paper-work and questioning, many of us will opt for the big brother choice – the one that will let us move about faster, albeit watched or followed at every step. RFID, iris scan, mobile-phone-following and more. The difference between Orwell’s book and our reality will be that we will eventually CHOOSE to be registered, iris-scanned, RFID-ed and so on, because it will save time and effort.

I told Alan my cow-analogy: when you have a few cows, you might let them graze on the meadow, you might melk them by hand and might have a name for each of them… but if you have dozens or even hundreds, the cows become cattle, are melked with machines, and might not ever leave the barn. If there are 500 million or a billion people in the world you might let them run about, but when 1 billion people are expected to live in the U.S. alone (and 20 billion in the world) by the end of the century, well, people become cattle.

Freedom and large numbers do not mix, that’s a fact.

U.N.: 50 percent more food needed by 2030 – World environment- msnbc.com
World food production must rise by 50 percent by 2030 to meet increasing demand, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday at a summit grappling with hunger and civil unrest caused by food price hikes.

And if that might be the situation by 2030, what about 2100, when the population has doubled again?