Attention

It’s a sad state of affairs when world leader’s first priority is to grab
the world’s attention. They want to be in the spotlight, as though that is an
accomplishment in and of itself. Is this some new game? Like charades? We see
one get lots of media time and immediately another one will do or say something
dangerous or controversial, grabbing up all of the news coverage. One-upmanship
to see who can be talked about the most. Who can get the most ‘likes’ or ‘shares’,
as though that was hard. One click isn’t much of an effort if you ask me. What
is hard, is tackling a few of the many issues our countries are facing, like
internet security, economic stability and public health. How about curing
cancer or finding a way to travel fast enough that space becomes the new
frontier. We are fast using up this planet, if we don’t figure out how to go
elsewhere soon things could get very ugly here.

Before the age of the internet you actually had to actually do
something to get your name posted all over the news. Like landing on the moon,
and returning back home safely. That was news. It was worthy of our attention.
Now all we have is a lot of huffing and puffing and very little or nothing to
show for it. Like the country song, what we all need is a little less talk and
a lot more action. I would say a lot less talk.

 

 

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Star Trek

Isn’t it amazing how much of the old Star Trek series, with Captain Kirk, Bones, Scottie and Spock, has come true? Remember the walkie talkies that look so much like our modern flip phones? What about Capt. Kirk asking, ‘Computer, give me any information on XYZ?’ We’ve come a long way. Now we can answer most any question by typing it in on our computers, an almost infinite amount of information is at our fingertips. Voice-activated ‘assistants’ are remarkably like the ‘computer’ Captain Kirk used. And this has happened in the last fifteen years.

But here’s the thing. When Capt. Kirk asked ‘computer’ for information, or commanded ‘her’ (she spoke with a female voice, even back then) all of his interactions were private. No one could know what he had asked her unless they were in the room with him when he said it. Now just suppose that Kirk had been going about his business, asking Computer every now and then a few questions about various items he might be curious about. But without him realizing it, Computer had also been logging all of his other interactions with devices aboard the Starship Enterprise, had tracked his every move, whom he spoke with, for how long, and what was said. Which is all a distinct possibility. But what if, unbeknownst to anyone aboard the Enterprise, not even Spock, the Klingons had gained access to this information? While Computer may not have named the personnel aboard ship, using anonymous ‘numbers’ associated with each person, it wouldn’t take long to figure out who was who.

That is exactly what is happening today with our reliance on apps created by Facebook and Google, among others. If you have an app active on your phone, it has access to everywhere you go, how long you stay there, if you post updates to Facebook, who was with you, what they were doing. And behind the scenes, all of that information is being sold to the Klingons, or to anyone else who has the money to pay for it, including governments, corporations, anyone who cares to ask and can pay the money to get it.

Maybe you live your life in such a way that you are happy with it being a complete open book to anyone who cares to look. Societies who have operated in such a manner have opened themselves up to the worst kind of manipulation by those who can and will take that information and use it against you. Think of the Stasi, or North Korea. It is the beginning of a power that has such complete control you no longer have any freedom at all. If you are constantly under surveillance, which is the case with most of us who use modern technology, you are no longer free. You are being watched, listened to, tracked and recorded, not just the things you post, but anything and everything the phone is capable of noticing, which is a lot. You often hear that our modern day smart phones have more computing power than the computers that sent men to the moon. That’s a lot of knowledge. Remember, without privacy, there can be no freedom.

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This is one App you do not need

Recently I’ve heard advertisements on radio and television for an insurance company app that ‘lets you prove you’re a good driver’. OK, I guess some people would take that bait. You might know you’re a good driver if you don’t have accidents, or haven’t had a ticket for a moving violation in several years.

But who would be foolish enough to download an app that tracks everything your car does. How long you idle, your speed, and believe me, applications these days also know the posted speed limit. My company uses a similar application to ‘watch’ it’s employees who drive company cars. In case no one else has noticed, most Americans don’t drive the speed limit, either in the city or on the interstate, or along county backroads. I know because I’m the one causing the bottle neck on two lane roads by driving the speed limit. Putting an app like this on your phone is like getting your insurance agent to drive with you everywhere you go. And while they’re tracking the car, are they also tracking where you go? Do you stay out late at night, or go through areas of town with a high crime rate? I’m sure that would bump up your insurance payments if you did. Say you get a job promotion and now have to park downtown. Up goes your insurance because the chances your car will be vandalized have just shot up from when you parked in an open lot in the suburbs. Did you want to spend your hard earned raise on insurance? Once you get the app, I suspect it will be very difficult to get rid of it, possibly penalties and fees will be involved

I strongly suspect that putting this application on your phone will NOT lower your insurance rates, and the chances your rates will go up are much greater than they will go down. More importantly, if we aren’t careful every move we make is going to be watched and recorded by somebody. Fakebook and Giggle already have us pegged, it’s a trend that needs to stop. Just don’t do it.

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Fakebook

I used to check Facebook at least once a day. While I never installed the app on my phone, I checked in every morning to see what friends and family were up to. Occasionally I posted something to my homepage, but not very often. I am a reluctant social media user.

But last fall while waiting in line at a movie theatre concession stand the service was so amazingly horrible I wondered if I could set up a dummy Facebook account in the time it took to place my order. Sadly, I could. I made up a name and gave a fake birthday, nothing about it was true, just to see if I could do it, then left a scathing review of the theatre’s customer service. After the movie, which was the latest JK Rowling Fantastic Beasts, I forgot about the dummy account. And since I signed off of my real account several months ago when it became increasingly clear that Facebook has no concern for it’s members other than having the ability to sell their data to the highest bidder, I didn’t think anything about Facebook again until a few weeks ago. Then I remembered the fake account on my phone and thought I should try to delete it. So I logged back into it and there were all of the suggested ‘friends’ the program had chosen for me. Almost all of them were from the church I go to, who are already friends on my ‘real’ account. I figured this was obvious since Facebook tracks where I go, it would assume that I would know members of my church. But then the strangest thing happened. All of this data that’s collected is supposed to be anonymous, they say it can’t really track YOU, just your data. But there in the list of suggested ‘friends’ was a real friend of mine whom I haven’t seen in several years and who lives in another city. I am absolutely certain that I am the only human being who knows both the people from my church and this particular person who has no connection with the church or this city at all. Without entering a shred of truth about my real identity, the application had recognized me. Needless to say, I was shocked because I thought anonymous meant just that. As I said, I never installed the app on my phone and only checked my Facebook account, the real one, from my computer at home. A further nail in the coffin of my Facebook account. I prefer to think of it as Fakebook. Oh, the way it was able to sort me from the fake account was real enough, but other than that, there is no verification of what is posted. Only your identity, where you go, who you talk to?, what you buy, who knows what they are tracking. And what you choose to say online is beside the point. The only thing Fakebook is interested in is your data. That’s where all of the money lies. I have a friend, from the same church that it recognized, who says she doesn’t care that she is being tracked. But this is not truly realizing the danger that these programs pose to our society. All of us are being watched, and not just real time, but our past, everything we do is being recorded through these apps that we so willingly install on our phones, and if Fakebook had their way, would control every interaction we have with anyone. If the government tried to do this people would be up in arms, but we are so naïve we are welcoming it, even paying for devices that spy on us. Are we really so desperate for the sad semblance of human interaction that social media really is, that we are willing to sell every bit of information about ourselves to get it?

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Elephant in the Room

What no one ever talks about is population growth. That’s the real issue we are facing. Instead of placing all our hopes on technology saving us from ourselves why not do the sensible thing and begin to reduce the human population. After all the really big problems facing us are due to too many human beings living on this planet. Already we need chemical fertilizers to produce enough food to feed us. There isn’t enough arable land to support the billions of people living now, not to mention what the population may be in decades to come. Yet, it is never mentioned as something we need to address. China did have their one child policy for several years with the unintended consequence that only boy children were saved, one way or the other. Of course, a shrinking population scares the pants off of any capitalist economics gurus, it doesn’t appear to work without unlimited new consumers.

Of course I am suggesting that this is a voluntary endeavor. If people were educated to understand how having more and more children strains the resources of the planet perhaps they would think twice about having more than two children per couple. Some might choose not to have any children at all or just one child. I suspect that the result would be a turning point for civilization. Never before have human beings voluntarily chosen to restrict their own personal desire for the good of civilization as a whole. I would not want this to be mandated since I hope that we are intelligent enough a species, and have enough self-control to manage it without outside enforcement.

I used to dream that space travel would provide a means of mass exodus from the earth, leaving plenty of habitat for the rest of the species on the planet. But it doesn’t appear to be happening fast enough to save the earth and possibly us with it.

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The Corner Store

Has anyone else noticed that smaller, family owned neighborhood grocery stores have been replaced by drug stores? Now, instead of going in to buy fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and poultry, the makings of a healthy meal, we have drug stores mainly selling prescription drugs. In our area we have an ad currently airing on broadcast TV (and maybe cable as well) about a guy who can only dream about eating tacos unless he takes a prescription pill every day. I guess that’s the answer to all of our problems, take a pill. It seems like common sense that if your body is telling you not to the eat tacos, you listen. Not anymore. Go to the doctor and get a prescription for heartburn, and while you’re there, you can get prescriptions for all kinds of things. Things that would’ve never even been mentioned within hearing of anyone who’s not been married for a while, now are advertised for even the kids to hear. Every single one of them has precautions at the end, and some of them quite serious. I always wonder, do people actually take these drugs after hearing these ads? ‘Ask your doctor about….’ Very strange. I thought it was supposed to be the other way around, the doctor tells you what drugs will help you, not the drug companies drumming up business for their products.

I miss those corner grocery stores. One that closed long ago was run by a Sicilian family. It was small, you could go from one end to the other in a couple of minutes, and there weren’t ten thousand items to choose from. You could walk down, pick up whatever looked good for dinner, go home, cook and have a good meal within an hour. Now it’s a drive and the stores are huge, the lines are long, it’s an endeavor. But we seem to prefer our drugs over taking care of ourselves. No exercise, stress, fast food and pills are the order of the day.

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Automatic flush

My work requires me to travel from city to city and work in a variety of businesses. Recently while at a grocery store I overheard several of the employees talking. One of them, a manager, had been in the ladies room and was telling the others that as she leaned over her store keys fell into the toilet. Whoosh!, off they went down to the sewer because the toilet flushes based on motion sensors, or light, not sure which. The keys to the store were gone. Not even a chance to get something to fish them out and sanitize them.

As mentioned above, I don’t have a regular office so using public facilities is necessary and what I am finding is a sad state of affairs in the public restrooms of America. They are not clean folks. I know what a clean bathroom looks and smells like, and even though they have automatic flush and battery operated towel dispensers, air-dryers for hands and motion detection faucets I just don’t get the feeling that I am in a place that’s clean. You know clean. There’s no layer of anything between you and the surface. The floors are not slippery. Mirrors are not murky or spotted, hard surfaces shine. The air smells, if it smells at all, fresh. There’s no mold. All of those things, any of them, is a rarity. Once in a while I come across a really clean bathroom and if possible I make it a point to compliment. There’s a rest area somewhere along my way that is always spotless. Last time I was there a cleaning lady was shining the towel dispenser while I washed my hands. I thanked her for a clean facility and told her how much I love a clean bathroom. She smiled and said she did too. It showed.

I suspect that this decline of cleanliness shows a shift in our priorities. A few decades ago we paid more attention to things like cleanliness and order. The public would not tolerate anything less. Nowadays we rely on automated systems to manage our chores. Or maybe we just think we can go and get a shot if we get sick. But if we were to ever experience the pandemic that all the experts say is coming I’ll just bet that the public restroom is where it’s going to get its start.

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Good Citizens

I notice frequently while driving that a majority, or close to a majority of people do not bother to use turn signals. I almost always use mine, unless there’s no one else on the road. Sometimes if I’m in a turn-only lane I will forego the blinker but most of the time I turn them on about fifty feet before turning. I am especially careful to do this when on the Interstate. That way if I don’t happen to see a car in the next lane, at least they can see that I intend to move over and hopefully avoid any accidents.

Sometimes I think other’s failure to use the turn signal is due to them being on the phone and not having a free hand at the time. But today I saw a couple of instances where they just didn’t bother. They saw me signalling and just turned in front of me without any indication that they were going to do so. Just another indicator of how we have come to treat each other, in many cases, our neighbors, in this society, formerly known as the greatest democracy in the world. A growing lack of respect for each other cannot in the end be a good thing. When we show disregard for others who are in our near proximity, what does that say about our society? Are we really so busy that we cannot extend common courtesy to those who are around us? Busy doing what? It saddens me to observe what we are turning into sometimes. I worries me to think that we are short selling the things that make for a great society: consideration, kindness, justice. I wonder too about the implications of our disregard for each other in these small matters, if it indicates the same feeling in matters of more importance. My hope is that before we get too far gone in this we will stop to consider where all of this is leading. Is this going to be the land of the selfish and the home of the greedy?

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