6.04.2011

I was writing a letter to somebody yesterday, by gmail not snail mail, who uses that anymore for god sakes? A message popped up on the mail screen, one that I don't recall seeing before. It asked me if I had considered sending a copy of my note to such and such a person. Well I hadn't and honestly wouldn't, there really being no nexus between the two parties. Kind of the computer to ask.

But it got me to thinking. We are in a truly sorry state of affairs if my computer has to give me suggestions regarding who I should or should not communicate with. Or who I may wish to be friends with.

Google of course, reads every letter you have written to anybody and conversely everything that you have sent. Have you noticed that the insidious little advertising that you see on the side of gmail actually corresponds to what topics you are discussing in your correspondence?  I could be talking about the Blue Heron Blast for instance and I will see that the ads popping up are for firecrackers or explosives or maybe even Audobon prints.

Now god bless google, they are a largely free service that makes its money off advertising. Their platform allows me to publish this blog largely for free, a blog in which I have not succumbed to the temptation to use their Adsense program to gain a few extra bucks every month by selling a little advertising. I find the ads annoying frankly and don't want to have to start watching what I am saying, in case I find that I have somehow pissed off my advertisers.

Considering my oft subversive tone, I am surprised that they haven't pulled my plug yet and with 2204 blogs and counting, virtually with no back up, a lot of my mutterings would be down the virtual drain forever. It happens daily. But the question arises, what level of privacy are we ceding by allowing all of our correspondence to be data mined? And which surely is being trap doored to a number of anonymously initialed governmental agencies?

I have also noticed that practically every large website has started its own little social networking machine. Widgetworld, you can log in through Facebook or Google or Digg or whatever. I find it mildly annoying and potentially insidious. Having been the dumb rube in a Facebook scam, I gave it up a year ago and haven't missed it a smidge, honestly. Just like I gave up television 18 years ago and never missed that.

We are putting a lot of faith in Google and the other internet services. They know who your friends are, where you are located (unless you have unchecked that latitude box on your droid), your buying habits on Amazon, your deviant porn viewing habits, your political persuasion, your own singular algorithm identifying all of your idiosyncrasies is probably neatly wrapped in a bow on some desk in Langley, with a number attached from 1 to 10 deciding what your threat level is to the state.

I had a glass of wine at the Gnarly Vine after work yesterday and John showed me the new oddly variegated square imprint patch that is getting festooned on all sorts of products like a bar code, which will contain all of your information and history like the mark of the beast. My anarchist side runs screaming.

I think that we need a new word, a word that can clearly convey the fear of the gnawing virtual apparatus, the cyber machinery that tweets and twits, files and sorts and seeks a larger and larger toehold in our personal world. Perhaps one day it will be illegal to be off the web?

I predict a booming business in the future at creating fake, bulletproof virtual identities to free us from the insidious and insatiable cyber beast. After the big push to link up, ye old sooth thinks that we will find an equal if not greater drive to make us ourselves invisible and out of the reach of the prying eyes of the grid.

Tune in, turn on and unplug.