The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Imagine, all you bazillion readers of this incredibly viral blog on your screen right now, that I start asking you for all your preferences, your inner secrets, your friends’ as well, that I need to gather up your nationalities, your gender, your buying history, that I keep track via GPS on your mobile device all the places you go, who you see, where you work, that I have a database that has every e-mail, phone call, credit card purchase you ever made. All that for free so that you don’t have to subscribe to this addictive and incredibly entertaining blog I post every day of your lives!!

And I promise that your information is protected. Ha ha. You and I both know it’s not protected. I’m not a bank. Not at all, but I would sure like to take your personal information and sell it to folks who could help me get to the bank. Folks who could sell you commodities they figure out from that data you want. Or politicians who could sell you Senators and Presidents based on your preferences. Or unscrupulous actors who could convince you to think democracy and liberty are fictions that need to be tossed on the scrap heap of history.

A guy named Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, decided to ask Facebook for an accounting of what they had for information on him. He received 1000 pages!! That’s a lot of data collecting by any standard you can think of. Today my boy Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress, apologetic as a killer on death row, claiming innocence but contrite while he awaits a pardon from the Governor. He’ll probably get that pardon, along with a slap on the hand.

Most of us in this Future Shocked world don’t care if Mark has collected all that information about us. We want that ‘platform’ he’s offered us for free. We want Google and Amazon and instantaneous algorithmic information and we don’t want to pay for it. What’s the harm if those pop-up ads target us? What have I got to hide? Maybe I wanted those hotel rooms in the country I just googled. Big deal. I can take it or leave it. So what if that item I just checked out on Amazon is now offering me a bargain over on the right of my computer screen? I don’t have to buy it.

So when I start dropping news feeds my Russian bot pals want to ‘share’ with you because they got the info that you prefer Fox to MSNBC or you got hot and bothered about pulling down those Confederate Statues or that you bought a subscription to Ammo Guns and Anarchy, you wouldn’t mind, would you? Course not, you’d rather read faux news than news that upsets your worldview. Life is hard enough without complicating things with facts. Naturally, I’m not talking about you and me — I’m worried about those folks who vote different than us, who think different than us, who are gullible and stupid and deplorable. Lock em up if we could. Lock em up!

No, I’m not talking about us.

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It seems cruel to pick on my pal Mark Zuckerberg now that everybody and their friends are piling on the poor guy when he’s down. I was just listening to an inspirational little speech he gave to his adoring employees the other day, imploring them to go out and make the world a public forum, one that would bring the world peace, capital P. It was positively evangelical. Facebook would bring love and understanding to the community space that was expanding like an exploding nova. The cheering and clapping Facebook minions ate it with a silver spoon, their faces upturned to the jumbotron the way Apple worshippers used to gaze at Steve Jobs. Somewhere in the back they must have been pouring Kool-Aid into those ubiquitous water bottles everyone carries with them to hydrate. Enlightenment Now! Kum Bah Yah!

A few blogs back I was mumbling about Bill Gate’s comments concerning the future of Artificial Intelligence, how he thought it would probably be positive, robots cleaning up spills on the factory floors and all, and my take was here was one of the guys who brought us personal computers but didn’t have a real keen sense of where his innovations might ultimately lead. Give him credit, he’s a little busy curing malaria and other world diseases, not much time to ponder the ramifications of Microsoft down the road to the future which is now in our rearview mirror.

Mark Zuckerberg put together a social club, mostly a way to hook up his Ivy League pals, then kept extrapolating, turned it into a global network of ‘friends’. Got himself some folks who knew how to monetize it, went public and now has billions in corporate worth. Or, I guess we should say, had. That stock of theirs is bleeding bitcoins with all the investigations into information sharing with everybody from Russian bots to the Trump campaign to every advertiser on the planet. Did Mark have a far-reaching vision of where things would lead?

I think he did. Just not a real accurate one. Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men? Looks like he saw himself as Santa. Or Jesus Christ. Either way, kind of missed the mark, Mark. Instead, you opened us all up like a corporate can opener, like we were a Pandora’s box you thought you knew what was inside of but really didn’t. You turned us all into marks, targets for advertisers, targets for politicians, targets for Russian bots. You laid the groundwork for faux news, for a world where truth and fiction become indistinguishable, where charlatans undermine democracy and demagogues become presidents. You made a fortune, Markie. You made a mess too. Thanks for the Big Vision. Oh, and thanks for the Kool-Aid.

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