Recently I was being hauled up-mountain in the Bluebird chair at Mount Snow. Except for the fact of this locale being where the encounter happened, it’s not an essential detail to the story. The chair is also known as the bubble lift, and when the top is down and the chair is underway it’s as much of a moving cone-of-silence as you’re likely to come across. That part is somewhat relevant. On second thought, everybody in their car is probably equally ensconced in bubbles as we go about our day—but I digress.
In this chair, besides myself, is a father and teenage son. We are chatting amiably as the lift ascends. About three quarters of the way up, a beeping sound, a notification, goes off, and the man begins a dialog with his digital assistant. “Text From Droden, what would you like me to do?” “Read it”. The message is read in the vaguely british female automaton voice we have all come to know so well. “What would you like me to do? Respond to Text, Delete Text, Save Text?” “Respond to Text”.
And the man begins his reply. “I won’t get out on the links until the last bit of snow is gone up here, which might be a while..hahahaha. End Message.” “Okay, Let me read it back to you. ‘I won’t get out on the links until the last bitch you know is gone up here.’ What would you like me to do? Send Text, Edit Text, Delete Text?” The boy quickly chimes in, “Send text.” But nothing happens. Until dad, after a chortle, says, “Send text,” and immediately the whooshing sound fills the echoey chamber.
At this point the dad turns to me and says, “How amazing is that? My hands are in my gloves, my phone is in my pocket the whole time, craaaazy HUH?” I say, “Yeah crazy.” And think to myself, that really is crazy. The lift arrives at the summit, we are delivered, say our requisite “Have a good one’s,” and I’m off on my run.
All the way down the mountain, riding at speeds that would break a body were I to lose control and hit a tree, I’m thinking about this incident. In one way the whole deal is just too easy, too convenient. We don’t need to hike one step to get up top, the trails are perfectly groomed carpets of snow, and we don’t even need to touch our phones to exchange golf date data with friends in another state. And furthermore, our phones are explicitly and singularly tuned our own voices.
I feel bourgeois and decadent despite any risky skill development and communing with nature. Then a last thought intrudes that makes me stop in my tracks. The man’s phone was listening to us talk the whole time. Receptive to all conversation. It was ready to serve at whim because it was taking everything in. Where does that data go, who has access to it? How secure and impermeable is that bank? Is this the price we pay for the illusion that the world is so at our fingertips we no longer even need to take our gloves off?
Par for the Course - Receptive to all Conversation
This is rather fascinating for more than one reason. This episode described by Spinoza, as I think he may be intimating, is ubiquitous.
For example, if you leave your Skype phone headset plugged into your PC’s audio and microphone jacks, does a PC intruder have a way to permanently listen in – as long as the microphone remains plugged in? You can unplug the mic, if you only want to listen to a DVD audio, but most people probably keep both jacks plugged in.
Technology is specifically designed to ‘scoop-up’ anything and everything for its voracious data-mining banks.
Being unaware of it until after the fact is ‘par for the course.’
Listening all the time
Samsung is selling voice-activated TV’s that are continually listening to the space they are placed in. In their privacy policy they state:
” Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
In other words, they are listening to you and selling relevant data about what you and your friends or family are saying to one another in the “privacy” of one’s home. Third parties can include anyone who wants to pay for this info, plus all the spy agencies and police monitoring, and so on.
Basically, it’s the Orwell telescreen, but instead of the government placing them in everyone’s homes, people are buying and installing them themselves!
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In related news, some towns are abusing their license plate readers. Instead of using them to stop “terrorism”, some municipalities mount them to vans and drive around looking for citizens with outstanding fines and fees, basically using them as collection devices. Of course, they never said that was their purpose when they bought them.
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Unfortunately, we live in an age when one must assume they have no privacy anymore. Not even in our own homes. The psychology and sociology of a society with no privacy will be an interesting study.
Unfettered monitoring
Surprisingly, advertisers enjoy more unfettered monitoring access of inter-U.S. web activity. “The government is limited in the amount of data it can collect,” says Bakke. “But businesses and the private sector can essentially collect all the data they want without government oversight. It’s much more pervasive.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/03/government-surveillance_n_5084623.html
Gov't is worse
But, we can choose not to buy a Samsung TV, or use Facebook, and so on from the private sector.
The government can continue to collect, and their “limits” are beyond the comprehension of most people. Gazillions of records. Phones called, people emailed, sites visited, pictures sent, location of car, energy used, money transferred, prescriptions filled, facial recognition, location of phone, duration of calls and so on. Far beyond web advertising, it is where you go, who you associate with, what you buy, and more.
Orwellution
Hard to stop this thought train wreck… What motivates such a turn in human behavior? Curiosity, paranoia, opportunism? Hard to think it’s garden variety nature unfolding… losing privacy… losing a tail…
Garden variety nature?!?
Dude, try incarnating as an aphid next time around. That’ll stop you from dissing garden life.