Technology, Privacy and Nothing About UFOs

A popular discussion for many years has been the acceleration of technology and our dependence on that technology at the cost of less human memory usage. This is not a new take on the idea that we are losing some of ourselves to an increasingly gadgetized world, but rather just my input, which tends to fall on deaf ears when discussed with most people.

We certainly love our devices. Our phones, our laptops, our Global Positioning Systems, and the myriad softwares available for each. Our phones process faster than all of NASA’s computers during the age of the Space Race, our laptops packed with more punch and much less size than a 386 IBM circa 1996. We carry with us music studios, vast music libraries, and thousands upon thousands of photos & documents. The total collection of each of our lives, comfortably fitting on a handful of gigabytes with room to spare. These are, of course, amazing and impressive things, but what price have we paid beyond dollars?

How many of you could tell me 5 of your friends phone numbers without referring to you cell phone’s contact library?

I can barely remember my own, let alone the number of anyone else. I’d be proper fucked if I had to make an emergency phone call, sans cell phone. Yeah, I could try 411 if anyone I knew was listed.

How many of you could write a few pages in a standard college ruled notebook without getting a hand-cramp?

I have near 100 notebooks of stuff that I have written, but interestingly, I have no notebooks that I’ve kept since 1999. Occasionally, I’ll take a notebook with me to the river or a park, planning to write, and side from lamenting the loss of my legible handwriting abilities, my hand becomes sore and cramped much sooner than it would have a decade ago. Same thing with sketching.

My writing hand is a little more productive than some other hardcore interface users, but that’s only due to my work in graphic design and the use of the pen tablet. Still, it does not really mete out the same stress and strain as when putting graphite to pressed pulp.

It was about 3 years ago that, as much of a computer geek as I am (and make no mistake, I am a rather huge computer geek) I am starting to become fearful of the route the world has taken. Sure, I could bring balance to my life and reinstate some of the more human processes of daily tasks, but the world itself is on a very fast road with no posted speed limit. Its not enough that I simply change my ways -- I’d be forced to continue in the same mode as the rest of the world, if I were to remain on the grid... and perhaps that in itself, is the answer: Living off the Grid.

I’ve heard acquaintances and friends talk from time to time about how great it would be to live off the grid, to relinquish some of the control of the digital world. To work with their hands again, setup home in the middle of nowhere, and significantly reduce their so-called carbon footprint. Yet, not one of them has really made the effort to do so. These things are usually only brought up around campfires or at a BBQ -- fire and smoke tend to bring out the primal nature of people, if only for a few hours.

Perhaps they talk themselves out of it, thinking that there is a rainbow in our future, and at the end of it is some perfect harmony to be found. Free Energy, clean water for everyone, massive nature preserves, synthesized meat -- all alongside a streamlined, computer driven world.

I’m not going to get into the use of avatars in real world experiences and how one day our existence may no longer depend on the blood and bones that fill us. I’m not saying that the direction we’re heading is necessarily a bad one -- only that it isn’t quite the future I has hoped for and I’m not quite sure I want it -- beyond the fantastical proclamations made in technology specials on the Science Channel.

I worry. I worry about giving ourselves away -- and we are giving ourselves away, if you think about it. We are throwing up our hands and allowing things external to ourselves, to run our schedules, our world, and our lives. And with that, we are abandoning something once very scared to us: Privacy.

And we’re doing it willingly.

We all laughed in high-school when paranoid people told us that we were heading towards an Orwellian dystopia: “That couldn’t happen here!” we’d say. “We’d recognize it happening and do something about it!” But would we?

Enter Facebook.

I’ve done the social networking thing for a long time. I had profiles on all of the major networking platforms - even Friendster back in the early 00s. But as much as I’ve been up on what’s current with the social functions of the Internet, I’ve been a pretty ‘terrible’ social networker. I’ve always been very picky about my privacy and what I let out there, and so I’ve never been very good at utilizing these systems as intended. Some of you may say “Deirdre, I’ve seen you post some pretty personal things” and that may be true, but I suppose it depends on what one deems as personal. My interests are not necessarily what I would consider personal to me, but my feelings about work, friends, family, the goings on of my everyday life -- I like to keep that shit on the down-low, and I very rarely update anything with what I am doing at any given moment, where I happen to be, or what emotional crisis I’m going through.

But when I click on the home tab for Facebook, I’m fed an infinite amount of data about each and every person I have ‘friended’, and as I’m sure some of you probably have witnessed yourselves, people give away a lot of private and personal shit. I find myself thinking “Why would someone announce [insert status update, here] and have it visible to everyone?”

I think one reason is the false sense of security and privacy that comes with these sites. People think that because they have their profiles set to ‘Friends Only’, that it’s good enough. They believe that because they choose who is and isn’t on their list, they are safe in what they choose to tell -- ignoring the obvious past privacy flaws that have plagued such networking sites in the past. If you think that only the people on your list have access to what you are running at the mouth about, you’re crazy.

Given the right reason (and probably no reason at all) the Government could have complete access to everything you’ve ever said on your Facebook. They’d know what you eat, where you've been, what drugs you’ve done, what music you listen to, and whether you like anal sex or not. You might be thinking that this is highly unlikely -- yet every day we hear about things that should scare the living piss out of us and raise our internal red flags. For example: Martial law in the gulf, the recent laws passed to make it illegal to record on duty police officers, and all of the other terrifying shit that’s been happening over the last 20 years.

And if we really do get to a point where we have subcutaneous chips in our arms and retinal scans at every entryway, at what point are we going to say enough is enough, and refuse the chains of an Orwellian world -- and will it be too late? We all swore it couldn't happen, wouldn't happen -- but these days the government wouldn't have to do much to make that happen if they wanted -- not with us walking willingly into a world where privacy is a thing of the past.

Sometimes I hope those Exo-nutcakes are right.