Thursday, June 11, 2026

South Wales

Cardiff is the major city of south Wales. It is built around a Norman castle, but has only been a major city since the Nineteenth Century. The modern city of Cardiff was made by the shipping of coal from the mines of Wales. Much of the population of Cardiff today is descended from English and Irish migrants, who came to work on the docks. This was once the busiest coal port in the world.

England and Wales united in 1536, Scotland joined in 1707. The union of England and Wales took place during the reign of Henry VIII (the eighth), who was from the Welsh Tudor Dynasty. The British royal title "Prince of Wales", the next in line to be king, is a recognition of the medieval Welsh kingdoms becoming part of Britain, but the holder of the title does not have to be Welsh.

"South Wales" is just a geographical designation, and not an official name. But it's name is reflected in the Australian state of New South Wales.

I am English by birth, but I was born within walking distance of Wales and have some Welsh ancestry.

The ancient name of Wales, Cambria, is still seen in the names of towns and streets. The ancient name of England is Albion, of Scotland is Caledonia, and of Ireland is Hibernia.

Here is Cardiff Castle. There are actually several castles around Cardiff. In fact, it is said to have more castles than any city in the world. The first five images are from Google Street View.






The scenes begin inside a printing shop. 

There are multiple scenes following. To see the scenes, after the first one, you must first click the up arrow before you can move on to the next scene by clicking the right or forward arrow. After clicking the up arrow you can then hide the previews of successive scenes, if you so wish.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4799042,-3.175713,3a,75y,330h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-fr04T8ZqkCc%2FVG4OhMDrfFI%2FAAAAAAAAA9o%2F99dvfe2OFO0mX-wIwq9NAJAiK_DtpICQQCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya84.61333-ro-0-fo100%2F!7i5632!8i2816

These four images of central Cardiff are from Google Earth.





Another thing that Cardiff is known for is the Cardiff Bay Barrage. There is a very wide tidal range at Cardiff, that is the difference between high tide and low tide. This meant that extensive "mud flats" were exposed for most of the day, which were unsightly. 

Tides are so important here because the narrowing Bristol Channel compresses the incoming tide, indicated by the arrow in the following image from Google Earth. This creates the second greatest tidal range in the world, after Nova Scotia. Cardiff is shown by the red dot and Bristol by the yellow dot.


The idea arose of building a dam across Cardiff Bay, with sluices to control the flow of water so that there would be, in effect, a permanent high tide. This opened the possibility of waterfront development, because the edge of the water would always be in the same place.

The project was highly controversial. Opinions of the proposed Cardiff Bay Barrage ranged from brilliant to too expensive to ridiculous to both ridiculous and too expensive. Then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher made clear her opposition to the project. But south Wales is left field when it comes to politics, and the opposition of the staunchly conservative prime minister seemed to be all the more reason to move forward with the project.

It turned into a massive civil engineering project that is today considered as a brilliant success, and was a great bonus for the city.

This is a set of sluices and a control building for the Cardiff Bay Barrage. The gates allow the water that flows into Cardiff Bay to continue on to the sea, but keeps the level of water in the bay always at the former high tide level. This makes it different from the dikes in the Netherlands, in that it holds water in rather than keeping it out.

Here are some scenes around the Cardiff Barrage, the dam that separates Cardiff Bay from the sea, so that the bay is no longer tidal. The first two images are from Google Earth and Street View. In the first image you can see the mud of low tide to the left and the water that is held in to the right.



https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4500767,-3.1650533,3a,75y,107h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2F-7BTRnr3m0XQ%2FVh_pZ6s3L7I%2FAAAAAAAAB_0%2FmE7yZ4Bp71EQyREb4L1jkCKWDdQWPLo6ACJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya312.9225-ro0-fo100%2F!7i10240!8i5120

Welsh voters rejected the idea of having a national assembly that was separate from England. But there is a strong emphasis on the Welsh language. Welsh was the majority language in Cardiff until Victorian times.

In the past, the British Government made an effort to get everyone to speak English. There used to be a Celtic language called Cornish, in Cornwall, that is now extinct. But the effort to suppress Welsh was less successful. Today the BBC actively supports broadcasting in the Welsh language.

According to the census, about 15% of people in Wales can speak, read and, write in Welsh. Those are concentrated in the western part of Wales, furthest from England. It is not like French in Quebec. Welsh is on signs everywhere, and is on radio and television. But there are no daily newspapers in Welsh, and hearing people speak it in daily conversation is elusive.

One way to know if you are in an area where a significant number of people speak Welsh is that it will appear first on bilingual traffic signs. Around Cardiff, that is not the case so English appears first. Image from Google Street View.


Welsh is a Celtic language. W and Y are used as vowels. The city of Cwmbran is pronounced as "Coom-bran". There is doubling of some letters to represent different sounds, dd, ff and, ll, which are not the same as the singular letters together.

All along the border between England and Wales is the familiar sign of:

"Croeso i Gymru", meaning "Welcome to Wales". Image from Google Street View.


The reason that the Welsh language is so different from English is that the Welsh people are considered to be the descendants of the original people of Britain, while English people and their language are the descendants of settlers from northern Europe, such as Angles, Saxons, Danes and, Vikings. This is why Welsh is a Celtic language but English is related to the other northern European languages.

This is the area around Llandaff Cathedral, starting inside the cathedral from the 12th Century. This is not in central Cardiff because remember that Cardiff was the town that grew around the castle, but was not a major city until the Nineteenth Century. There is thus no very old, centrally-located, Cardiff Cathedral. There is the cathedral in central Cardiff that was built in the Twentieth Century. The first four images are from Google Earth and Street View.





https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4957754,-3.21813,3a,75y,105.48h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh4.googleusercontent.com%2F-aNcimTa66Ww%2FU8_aoDnm-qI%2FAAAAAAAABvU%2F77i0mdFlw7skvXwwo19EmOVjtABwDvy0gCJkC%2Fw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya310.5653-ro0-fo100%2F!7i9216!8i4608

Here is an older residential area of Cardiff, to the west of the central part of the city. There are Welsh names around Philadelphia, such as Bryn Mawr and Bala Cynwyd, and any Philadelphian would feel right at home in Cardiff's row houses. The first two images are from Google Street View.



https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wales,+UK/@51.4683456,-3.1848729,3a,75y,87.46h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1soSWfsD2sVZgUIzRblqc7SQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DoSWfsD2sVZgUIzRblqc7SQ%26yaw%3D87.46161875131779!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0x486434b66c1c0fed:0x1ebb71bc8aa5e8a2!8m2!3d52.1306607!4d-3.7837117!16zL20vMGo1Zzk?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUxMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

Another major city in south Wales is Newport, to the east of Cardiff. This is a medieval city that, like Cardiff, grew up around a Norman castle. This was a more important port than Cardiff until the mid-Nineteenth Century.

Here are some scenes around Newport, including the ruins of the castle. Notice that we are starting in front of the BBC Cymru office. This is the BBC channel which broadcasts in Welsh. "Cymru" means "Welsh" in the Welsh language. The first two images are views of central Newport. The third and fourth are of the Transporter Bridge and the fifth is of the castle.






The central business street of a city in Britain if often named "High Street", the equivalent of "Main Street" in North America.


To the west of Cardiff is another city on the coast of south Wales, Swansea. Unlike Cardiff and Newport, Swansea specialized in metals, rather than coal. Workers in Swansea were so skilled in separating metals from their ores that ore was often brought from other countries to be refined in Swansea. The city's nickname used to be "Copperopolis".

What Swansea does have in common with Cardiff and Newport is that it also grew up around a Norman castle. Isn't it ironic that the three major cities of south Wales are built around castles that were originally put there to defend against the native Welsh people? Welsh cities center around castles, just as English cities center around cathedrals.

Here are some scenes around the center of Swansea. The first two images are from Google Street View.




Here is a look around a residential area of Swansea, with the very Welsh name of Brynhyfryd. You can be sure that you have crossed the border and left England when you see a name like that.

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.6427027,-3.9480799,3a,75y,281.29h,93.96t,357.71r/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1ssGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DsGn1qbMgzo65xGngCRjEfA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D6.954975%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 

Carmarthen is a town in southwest Wales that is not on the coast. It has a very long history and was important in medieval times, before the Industrial Revolution made the coal that was handled by the port cities so important. This used to be the most important town in Wales. These six images of Carmarthen, including the castle, are from Google Street View.







Tenby is a seaside resort town that goes back to the days before mass transportation brought inexpensive vacations in sunny places. The first of the following scenes are at Tenby's medieval walls, much of which is still standing. There is a tidal island, meaning it is only an island at high tide.

If you see the palm trees, you are not imagining it. Tenby, like Cornwall in England, are the places in Britain that are most exposed to the Gulf Stream, which brings warming water. So yes, palm trees can grow in Britain. The first five images of Tenby are from Google Street View.






In this image, from Google Earth, the island is part of the mainland at low tide but not at high tide.



Not far from Tenby is Pembroke Castle. This is where Henry VII was born. The royal House of Plantagenet had fallen into civil war between two of it's cadet branches, the House of York and the House of Lancaster. A long war in France had ended and it was easy to hire private armies. Henry had inherited the Lancaster line and led it to victory in what is known as the War of the Roses. Because the symbol of the Lancastrians was a red rose and that of the Yorkists a white rose. This is not the same as the later civil war between the Royalists and Oliver Cromwell. 

Henry VII was thus the first king of the fabled House of Tudor. He had a daughter, Margaret, who married a king of Scotland. This would lead to a personal union between the countries, and the beginning of the House of Stuart, when the Tudor line died out. The British monarchy doesn't really have dynasties because the royal line between successive "houses" has been continuous and never permanently interrupted by force. Three images of Pembroke Castle from Google Street View.




Monmouth is within walking distance of where I was born. It is built around a castle, but the castle came later. Monnow Street, where the following scenes begin and the main street of Monmouth, has been used since ancient times. The famous stone arch, on the bridge over Monnow River, is from the Thirteenth Century.

I can remember, from early childhood, when I was first brought to look in the shops on Monnow Street. We usually went to Gloucester for shopping but one day we came here.

One thing that should be more widely-known is that, in medieval times, the idea of making a simple warm hat out of sheep's wool arose in Monmouth. This resulted in what was known as the "Monmouth Cap". What this led to was the ubiquitous knit caps, sometimes called a beanie, that are seen in cold climates across the world today.

Also near Monmouth is Tintern Abbey, which we saw in the posting on this blog, "The Reformation At 500", February 2017. The first two of the following seven images of Monmouth, from Google Street View, are of the Norman Arch.








Monmouth was the hometown of Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce fame. The company is known for it's iconic car but Charles Rolls, a race car driver, was more interested in aircraft. Henry Royce did not share the interest in aircraft, and the two separated. Charles Rolls would ultimately be the first Briton to die in a plane crash. 

This is the statue of Charles Rolls in Monmouth. He is holding a model aircraft. Image from Google Street View.


The estate of Charles Rolls' family near Monmouth was like a palace. Image from the Wikipedia article "The Hendre".


Rolls-Royce, best-known for the car, would ironically end up putting most of it's effort into producing aircraft engines, which would have fulfilled what Charles Rolls wanted for the company. Image from the Wikipedia article "Rolls Royce Holdings".



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Technology And The Landscape Of Britain

If you read about Wales during medieval times, Carmarthen was the most important town. The major cities on the south coast are rarely heard of, except as the sites of Norman castles.

The Industrial Revolution brought the steam engine, which made possible much larger ships, and also a voracious demand for coal. South Wales had an abundance of coal and this brought the development of the major cities on the south coast, Cardiff, Newport and, Swansea.

If you read about England during medieval times there won't be much about the major cities of the Midlands, Liverpool, Manchester and, Birmingham. There are not the royal palaces or the majestic cathedrals of the south.

The Industrial Revolution changed that and was centered on this area. This was the major site of the factories that the Industrial Revolution brought. Bristol, to the south, had been England's major port in the days of sailing ships. But the larger ships made possible by the invention of steam engines couldn't safely navigate the waters around Bristol and Liverpool became the primary port, exporting the products of the many factories.

If you read about Scotland during medieval times the country, which was separate from England until 1707, revolves around Edinburgh. Glasgow, which has long since been Scotland's largest city, will likely be barely mentioned. Glasgow is the country's major city of the Industrial Revolution and the port for the much-larger ships that it brought.

Another product of the Industrial Revolution was railroads. Trains carried passengers, as well as goods. The development of passenger trains, before the development of air travel, brought the seaside resorts. There was Scarborough on the northeast coast, Blackpool on the northwest coast, Southend-on-Sea nearer London, and several resorts on the south coast.

The postwar period brought several waves of "new towns" being established. This is what Britain does instead of allowing cities to sprawl. The best-known of these new towns is Milton Keynes.

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The Religious Center Of Wales

St. David is the patron saint of Wales. He started a monastery and St. David's Cathedral was later built on the site. This was considered as an important site for pilgrimage. The local community, St. David's, has less than two thousand people. But a city is defined in Britain as the site of a cathedral. So it must be considered as a city.

These seven images, from Google Street View, are of the cathedral.







These two images of the gatehouse are from Google Street View.


The former Bishop's Palace is adjacent to the cathedral. Wales has so many sites like this, particularly castles, that it impossible to maintain them all and the palace is now ruins. Three images from Google Street View.



The following two images, from Google Street View, are of the surrounding community of St. David's, which has the status of a city.


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Geoffrey Of Monmouth

When I was about four years old I was somewhere with my parents and they showed me a wooden statue of a man holding a book. It must have made an impression on me because I have been a lifelong avid reader, and now am writing here. Although I don't think I knew what a book was at the time, as I wasn't old enough to have started school. 

I remember the name of "Arthur". The statue is of Geoffrey Of Monmouth. Monmouth is a Welsh town near where I was born. It is known as the hometown of Charles Rolls, of Rolls-Royce. The following image is from the Wikipedia article "Geoffrey Of Monmouth".

Geoffrey Of Monmouth was a Catholic cleric who lived nine hundred years ago. The statue is near Tintern Abbey. This was a cathedral-scale monastery church that had been operating for about four hundred years when the Protestants decided to abandon it following the Reformation, as it was in a somewhat remote location that wasn't suitable for a cathedral. Tintern Abbey is now a tourist attraction that has been falling into ruin for the five hundred years since the Reformation. But Geoffrey Of Monmouth lived before the Reformation, at the time Tintern Abbey was built.

Geoffrey Of Monmouth was a writer, and wrote a history of the Kings of Britain. But his writing, while widely influential, is now considered as having a storytelling element to it, and probably not being entirely factual. What his writing is really known for is to popularize the story of King Arthur. 

The Celtic people, including the Welsh and Cornish, are generally considered as being the original people of Britain, while English people are mostly descended from the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings that came later. Welsh mythology has heroes who may one day reappear and rid the island of invaders, meaning English people. The root of this mythology is the writing of Geoffrey Of Monmouth, although he was believed to be just colorizing the history of the Kings and didn't have anything revolutionary in mind.

The two kings that were really popularized by Geoffrey Of Monmouth are King Arthur and Cadwaladr, who was supposedly the final king of the Welsh kingdom that existed before the Anglo-Saxons came. But it is King Arthur who has really captured the public imagination. 

Whether or not King Arthur ever actually existed depends on who you ask. Some believe that he was really two or more people that Geoffrey Of Monmouth combined into one. Others believe that the historical embellishments of Geoffrey Of Monmouth were probably not intentional but that he confused people with similar names, particularly in the case of Cadwaladr. But there are other who not only believe that King Arthur existed, but that he will return someday as a messianic figure.

The knights that were with King Arthur are known as the Knights Of The Round Table. The reason for a round table was supposedly that, with a rectangular table, the seat at the head of the table is considered as a higher-status position. A round table meant that everyone was equal. Their supposed round table is on display in Winchester, which is believed to have been associated with King Arthur. Image from Google Street View.

250 years after the time of Geoffrey Of Monmouth came the Welsh rebellion of Owain Glyndwr. This was certainly motivated, at least in part, by his stories, even if that had not been his intention. 

Decades after this rebellion some world-changing events took place. Henry Tudor was born in Pembroke Castle, in Wales. When I was a teenager I saw the castle from outside. Image from Google Street View.

The ruling royal House Of Plantagenet had two rival cadet branches, the House Of Lancaster and the House Of York. Henry Tudor's family was part of the Lancastrian branch. When a Yorkist king took the throne, Henry spent more than a decade in exile in France. 

Henry returned to Britain to seize the throne, landing in Wales near his birthplace. As he proceeded across Wales, gathering support before defeating the Yorkists in battle and taking the throne, he linked himself with these heroes that had been popularized by Geoffrey Of Monmouth. 

Henry named his first son, who would inherit the throne, Arthur. This was the beginning of the world-famous Tudor Dynasty, and would give the impression that King Arthur had returned. But Arthur Tudor would die as a teenager and it would be another son, Henry, who would inherit the throne and become known to the world as Henry VIII (The Eighth). The Tudors were of Welsh origin and their rule of England can definitely be seen as rooted in the long-before writings of Geoffrey Of Monmouth.

Henry VIII never fulfilled the Arthurian vision of restoring the island to the native people, now the Welsh, by ridding it of English people. He ruled England. It was still England, instead of Britain, because Scotland was still a separate country at this time. But Henry VIII did something else that was momentous. He joined England to the Protestant Reformation that was already underway in continental Europe. So he didn't rid Britain of English people but he did rid England of Catholicism.

This ultimately led to England's Civil War which, unlike in continental Europe, wasn't between Protestants and Catholics but between the two branches of Protestantism that emerged, the Anglicans and the Puritans. In political terms it was between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. It ultimately resulted in some of the Puritans leaving England altogether, and that is where America's Pilgrims and Puritans came from.

The overthrowing and execution of a king, by popular revolt to establish a new order without a monarchy, could well have set the precedent for the later French Revolution, which can be seen as initiating the modern political era.

Protestants can have a somewhat dim view of the world. The Bible typically portrays "the world" as a foolish and sinful place that, for the most part, has failed to follow the Word of God. But that can be a good thing. When we have too much respect for the way that things have always been done we are less likely to notice better ways of doing things. This is why Protestants are progressive and it is no coincidence that the Industrial Revolution started in England following the Reformation.

Protestants are individualistic, with a "think for yourself" ideal. This started in religious terms, with anyone now being able to read the Bible for themselves and to join any church or set up their own instead of having no choice but to belong to the same church as everyone else. The result was the modern concept of democracy, which is very much a Protestant creation. An essential element of the Reformation was the invention of the printing press, in northern Germany which was Protestant territory. 

The presidential court of John F. Kennedy was known as "Camelot". This was the name of King Arthur's court. Ireland was originally Celtic, like Wales, and, while King Arthur isn't usually associated with Ireland, Kennedy was Irish-American. Could this have been an attempt to imply that Kennedy was the return of King Arthur?

There were early kings who fit the general description of Arthur, Alfred the Great and his grandson Athelstan. But they were Anglo-Saxons who battled Vikings, which came later. Both were known for their wisdom, character and, benevolence. I believe that it was these early kings that inspired the Legend of King Arthur.

For another mystery, the following image from the Wikipedia article "King Arthur" shows the "Three Crowns", on both his vest and the pennant. We saw this in the posting "Three Crowns And Fleur De Lis". 


So much of the modern world can be traced back to the writing of Geoffrey Of Monmouth.
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Evolutionary Theory

The sturdy plastic garbage containers that seem to be in use everywhere provide a lesson in evolutionary theory. This is the idea that many people who do not want to believe in God use to explain where life came from. Image from Google Street View.

The basis of evolutionary theory is "survival of the fittest". By random chance, influenced by factors such as the effects of cosmic rays on cells, some members of a species will be born with characteristics that are beneficial, such as greater intelligence or better vision. These members will be more likely to survive long enough to pass along their genes than those without the beneficial characteristics. Eventually the entire species will be transformed into a new species that is better suited for survival.

A simple example of evolution is giraffes. A giraffe eats leaves from trees. It would be an advantage for a giraffe to have a long neck, in order to be able to reach more leaves. Every once in a while a giraffe was, by random chance, born with a long neck. These were more likely to survive long enough to pass along their genes so that all giraffes eventually had long necks.

The issue with religion is that some people have taken the theory further than the founding text, "On The Origin Of Species", and used it to propose that life itself originated by random collisions of atoms. This leaves no need for God to have created life and the theory has become the intellectual foundation for those who do not want to believe in God. Even though the original theory does not try to explain where life originated.

Even before I was a Christian I knew that this theory, while having some truth to it, does not really reflect what we see in reality. The only reason for a species to improve to the point that it changes into an entirely new species is that it becomes, by gradual random chance, more suited to survive in it's environment. This must mean that the "higher" forms of life, meaning more highly evolved, must be better suited to survival than the "lower" forms of life.

The trouble is that the "higher" forms of life, unless they can eat plants, are dependent on the "lower" forms for survival. Thus their suitability for survival is no better than the "lower" forms, if they are dependent on them for food. If one species is the "hunter" and the other is the "hunted", the "hunter" is no better suited for survival if it is dependent for food on the "hunted".

Living things are always more complex than their surrounding inanimate environment. If living things began in this environment with random collisions of atoms then the more highly evolved, meaning better suited for survival, a species is the more complex it should be. But this is not at all what we see. No one would consider the rats as a higher species. Yet they are, along with species like pigeons and squirrels, abounding while many of the "higher" species are in danger of extinction.

What about ants? They are not a higher species but they are everywhere. If a nuclear holocaust destroyed humans, ants would still be here. Plainly and simply the "higher" species are not better suited to survival as evolutionary theory says they should be. Being more complex makes them more vulnerable to the cataclysms that occur periodically, from global warming to asteroid impacts. 

From an evolutionary perspective neither animals or insects make any sense. Living things would be much better off being plants. An animal or insect has to spend it's life procuring food and will die if it doesn't succeed. A plant, in contrast, only has to do nothing and everything it needs will come to it. If a plant gets a broken branch it will almost always grow back. If an animal gets a broken leg it means almost certain death.

Early in this blog I put the postings about creationism and evolutionary theory on a separate blog. The original evolutionary theory doesn't try to explain how life originated, that was added later. Evolutionary theory has effectively become a major world religion and has distorted our thinking, as we saw in "Our Evolutionary Paradise", May 2024.

Here is a link to the creation blog. I discussed rats in "Reverse Evolution".

www.markmeekcreation.blogspot.com

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Our Perilous New World

Let's just give a little bit of thought to the perilous new world that we are creating. This isn't about global warming and the depletion of groundwater reservoirs, we know about that already. This is about technology.

There are cameras watching us everywhere, both when we are walking and when we are driving. Cameras that are close enough can use facial recognition to identify us. Those that aren't can recognize us by the way we walk. Aside from mounted cameras there are people wearing smart glasses. Biometric data is being collected everywhere and is gradually replacing traditional identification like passports.

We already know that our phones know everything about who we are, what we do and, where we go. Apps that involve driving can now tell if the user is a good driver or if the phone is being taken out of the phone holder while driving.

Automatic license plate readers, both stationary along roads and mounted on vehicles, are recording everywhere that we go and where the car has been parked. The cameras can take an image of the car if it didn't get a chance to read the license plate. No two used cars are exactly alike and any ideosyncracies can be used to identify the car anywhere. The cameras can tell if the driver is intoxicated and whether they are using the phone or not wearing their seatbelt.

Cars are also watching us from the inside, although this doesn't get a lot of attention. Using GPS, your car is watching everywhere that you go. Of course it knows whether you are a good driver and might be recording audio and video inside the car. Your car knows if you are doing proper maintenance on it. Cars have many computer modules and this shouldn't come as a surprise.

The really important new development in surveillance is AI. The vast amount of data that is being collected would otherwise not be of much use unless we knew exactly what we were looking for. It would require millions of people to go over all of that data. But AI changes everything because it can quickly do the work of those millions of people. AI can scan all of the data that is collected and flag anything that looks out of the ordinary. This makes surveillance many times more powerful than it would be without AI. We could say that electronic surveillance before AI was "reactive" but now it is "proactive".

With the new virtually cashless and paperless society, most of what we do and where we go is somehow visible online. Before the widespread use of AI, that wouldn't matter much for the average person because there wasn't enough people to go over the vast amount of data that was being collected. The data was valuable only as metadata, or if we knew exactly what we were looking for. AI has changed that in that it can quickly do the data analysis of millions of people.

AI has brought scams to an entirely new level. A person's voice can be easily cloned by AI. A family can be called and it will make the caller sound like a cloned family member's voice. Fake people can be created by AI, and then apply for loans, credit and, financial aid.

That's a summary of the perilous new world at the personal level. Now let's go to the global level.

Social media has made it easy to commit sabotage or espionage in another country. No longer is it necessary to train and send secret agents. Now it is easy to recruit local people online, usually using money or ideology or simply the promise of status.

Cameras are a tool not only for internal surveillance but also for external attack. Since there are cameras everywhere, a nation's own cameras can be hacked and used against it. This tactic was reportedly used to kill the Supreme Leader of Iran.

The war in the Middle East has brought a new dimension to warfare. What about our electronic devices, such as phones? Who has handled them? Might they suddenly explode?

The new development that gets the most attention is drones. What is so significant about drones is how inexpensive they are. Any nation could easily make or acquire thousands of drones. What is so perilous about drones is that they have made offense much easier and inexpensive than defense. Drones can certainly be shot down with missiles. The trouble is that the drones might cost a few thousand dollars each while the missiles that shoot them down might cost a few million dollars each.

Unlike conventional planes, most drones don't require runways and can be launched from anywhere. Even short-range inexpensive drones can be brought near to the target in a vehicle and then launched. 

A drone attack can be very destructive even if it is not successful. Drones are so inexpensive that, even if they are all shot down, it will cost the defender many times more to shoot them down than the drones cost the attacker. Even without an actual drone attack, the cost of defending potential targets such as oil terminals and planes on the ground would be vastly more than the drones themselves would cost.

A stadium full of people, or any such mass event, would be very vulnerable to a drone attack, especially drones nearby in a truck. Just the threat of an attack could force the cancellation of the event or the spending of an exorbitant amount of money to defend it.

The present wars have shown how a nation's own phone network can be used against it by drones. We have gotten completely dependent on phones and a drone attack would be worth very many times it's cost, besides whatever targets it might hit, if it could force the target nation to shut down it's phone system.

It is bad enough that drones can attack ships from long distance. The world is utterly dependent on imports by ship and, even if the drone attack is not successful, it will dramatically raise insurance rates and make whatever the ship is carrying more expensive. But that is just the beginning. A plane is especially vulnerable to drones while taking off or landing. An inexpensive drone flying into a jet engine would likely cause the plane to crash. Drones could easily force airports to shut down.

The latest development is land robots and vehicles for warfare. Like drones in the air, land robots make offense easier and less expensive relative to defense. Land robots are electrically powered, so that they are not dependent on fuel. They do not require the training of a human crew or sustaining the crew on the battlefield. This makes them much less vulnerable and expensive than traditional military vehicles. A robot vehicle that is partially disabled would likely still be able to continue firing. 

The next development, already underway, is to have drones and vehicles powered by AI so that they can choose their own targets and no potentially detectable and jammable communication with a base will be necessary.

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