Bourne Ultimatum, or Bourne Reality?

I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday, no doubt helping it romp to a new box office record. Well that's another 110 minutes my life that fairly flew by, but I have to say it was a rather enjoyable 110 minutes. Being a scientist and technologist I have to say that it was a pleasant change to watch a movie like this where the least believable aspect of the movie was the stunts.

Yes, it was an unwritten but clearly defined subtext of this movie that all the technological marvels that kept the bad guys on Bourne's tail were basically an amalgam of all the well known spying technologies we already know are out there and being used. More to the point the idea that the government might actually have a group wielding them as it did in the movie is no longer any surprise at all.

Covert renditions and killings, assassins (aka "assets") in every city, waterboarding, brain washing, ubiquitous phone and Internet taps, tracking by GPS and RFID location - all plausible and feasible if not actually demonstrable. Eight years ago we might have scoffed at claims of the government doing such things, now it all goes down easily just like the blue pill, so easily in fact that I'm sure more than a few in the audience were feeling good about rooting for the anti-government hero Bourne exactly because they empathized with his plight as their plight.

As we progress technology is making everyone fiercely aware of their own "digital identity" and their impending lack of anonymity in all but mental activities (and even possibly not those thanks to brain scanning advances) and how tenuous their control of identity actually is. In eight years time when they are no doubt already remaking the Bourne trilogy (you'll notice that remakes now come sooner and sooner) what superhuman stunts Bourne will have to pull to flee his pursuers.