The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Light the candles, haul out the cake, open the presents! The Web is 30 years old. Remember when we all thought this would free the oppressed, topple authoritarian regimes, democratize information and liberate us all? Barely ten years later Google opened up shop and every bit and byte of data was available to anyone who owned a computer at the touch of a keystroke. Nine years after Google the I-phone made computers mobile and Apple rich. This was 2007, a mere 12 years ago. Time flies when you’re revolutionizing the world!

Thirty years. You probably remember the first personal computer you owned. Not that long ago. They were introduced in 1975. The mizzus had one probably about 1985. I got one about turn of the century. The one I’m using now is probably the 4th generation. Karen’s is probably double that. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with her and a friend, arguing whether a computer was just a tool or whether it was a revolution. That conversation has morphed into whether the revolution is beneficial or malevolent. Future Shock is behind us now. Future Fear is here.

The Tech magnates rule the world. They own the data for every keystroke you make on the internet, every purchase you make online, every biographical reveal you put up on Facebook, every route you take, every step you make. They analyze it, they use it, they sell it, they watch you day and night. Zuckerberg believes in an open society, one without secrets, one where you cannot hide. He made it so.

The democratization of information turned out to be only half the story. The dissemination of false news is the other half. Turns out we don’t have the wits to check our facts so we’re suckers for every hate monger, political dirty trickster, government intrusion, crooked scammer and the 500 pound kid on the bed in his parents’ basement. We mumble about monitoring Facebook or Google, we pound our chest about loss of privacy, we make speeches in the legislatures about clamping Pandora’s Box partway down. Give me a break.

The genie is out of the box and howling now. Artificial Intelligence is just around the corner. We can no longer imagine the world before the Web any more than we could imagine one before the steam engine. No one pines for the horse drawn carriage, no one wants to be tethered to a land line phone, no one wants to live without their Facebook friends. I had a fire down at my electrical panel box yesterday and my neighbor, the one I’d run across the road to have call the fire department, seemed to gloat when he asked me after the fire had been put out, if I still thought I was smart not owning a cellphone. I told him there was no way I was buying a $#@&^ cellphone. It doesn’t make me smart, but I’m digging some heels against the winds that blow me toward a future I don’t trust any more.

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