Do You Guys Hear Yourself When You Talk?

Hilarious piece by JASON JONES on the The Daily Show did an excellent job of putting in perspective what’s happening on the front lines of the Technology v.s. Privacy War. I have been getting more and more uncomfortable with how easily people are surrendering their privacy rights and accepting surveillance, in exchange for what? Convenience? A Fad Gadget? The technophiles that Jones cleverly mocks as “Phillip K. Dicks” appear to be totally oblivious to how their expensive toy is crossing a dangerous line. One even refers to objections to her filming as a Hate Crime!! People never used to be so afraid of cameras – the pictures more than likely wound up in someone’s boring slide show or scrapbook, never to be seen. But the implication today when you have a phone camera pointed at you is MUCH different- it says “I have an agenda, I’m putting you on the internet for a reason you may not like”!! And Google Glass is now seeking to turn humans into SPYBOTS with a whiny, condescending attitude, demanding a non-existent right. Google built a giant Metadata warehouse in San Francisco, and are lofting Wi-Fi relaying balloons worldwide, seeking to go where “Google Streetview” cannot…..yet.

Andy Warhol’s Curse

“In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”

Andy’s words were never interpreted as the threat they truly represented. Today we see the awful consequences of them – a narcissistic, oblivious popular culture that lifts banality onto a pedestal, while belittling and dismissing those with true ability. Video games that give the user a false sense of accomplishment, brainwashing them to believe they can instantly possess skills it takes years to acquire. Television programs that create a cult of personality around people whose only ‘talent’ is obnoxious behaviour, training viewers to accept lying, conniving, & gossip as desirable traits.

It is now considered a normal situation that talented performers can only achieve a brief, transitory fame by submitting to a degrading contest where they are pitted against other hopefuls,  harshly judged by vacuous has-beens,  only for the sake of getting the public to  ‘vote’ by 1-900-BLEED-ME-DRY phone. Why can’t their talent simply be presented for viewers to enjoy, instead of this disgusting roman circus?

The economic engine that once supported music by selling records to young people has been supplanted by ringtones and downloads, that deprive the artists, while enriching the multinational telecommunications industry. Vinyl records and CDs created jobs, and a physical commodity that could be held,  listened to , and APPRECIATED. Today’s stream of digital phantoms employs only computers, and can be programmed to vanish, leaving nothing behind.

“Reality Television is people who aren’t actors, saying things written by people who aren’t writers… it’s like an amateur production of nothing,  or a photo of a drawing of a hologram”~Dana Gould