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Dispatches From Dystopia

~ "What man by worrying can add one cubit to his span of years?"

Dispatches From Dystopia

Category Archives: Smartphones

Phishing, Etc.

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by David in Big Business, Bloggers, Politics, Smartphones

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#Phishing, #Surveillance Marketing

So somebody was phishing and trying to get information from me. That’s bad. Then I consider all the information I give out and Google, among others, tracks. It’s called “Surveillance Marketing”. Google records all kinds of metadata about us that we innocently provide, legally, through those User Agreements that we never read. Then we get ads on our Smartphone pages from merchants we’ve used both online and/or brick and mortar. We become super-customers. We reassure ourselves that this isn’t creepy, or only just a little bit. Yet we know that this is merely Big Brother Watching Us version 2.0

The truth is the Internet is anything but anonymous, anything but private. Like God, the Internet never forgets. Unlike God, it never forgives. Whatever we put there, wherever we go, that click is always there.

The Information Age plutocrats, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. are all in bed with the politicians, so don’t expect your Internet privacy to suddenly be respected if these tycoons can make money off of you. They work campaign “contributions” into their cost structures.

This begs the question, “How do I go dark?” Will I have to end this blog, as much as I enjoy writing it? I feel like The Google people are digitally groping my “junk” and squeezing my ass every time I go online. And I’ve had enough.

“Shazzam”

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by David in Futurism, Smartphones, Uncategorized

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Technology

I got a text from a long time friend just as I was sitting down to the huevos rancheros I ordered for brunch at my friendly neighborhood trendy restaurant.

He was on a weekend bicycling excursion to where we call The Center Of The Universe, Ashland,Virginia. Virtual Railcam LLC has a camera placed there, so that trainspotters like me can watch rail traffic at home. (Amtrak’s Northbound Silver Star #92 just passed by.)

He texted to let me know he just bought a cookie and would be riding by the webcam. I have known John since sixth grade. We were roommates our First Year at the University of Virginia. We live in the same town and communicate almost daily.  Fifty-plus year continuing friendships are remarkable these days, but  I could not have imagined receiving a text from him, then seeing him wave at me in a live image on a tiny handheld computer fifty four years ago.

Breath-taking. 

The larger point I want to make is that assumptions we have about progress are being outpaced by that actual progress itself. We still cling to Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ideas about the world and exercise little scepticism about them. Malthusian ideas about population growth and food supply were advanced before mechanization, plant genetics, and animal breeding revolutionized agricultural productivity. Think about that.

Do we face a technological utopia or dis-topia? I don’t know. But our visions of the future say more about us today than they do about what tomorrow has in store.

I Love The Apochrypha

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by David in Catholic Life, Smartphones, Uncategorized

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Sirach 18 : 26 – From morning until evening, the time will be changed, and all these are swift in the eyes of God.

http://goo.gl/r2rtvd

Macro View

21 Sunday May 2017

Posted by David in Art, Old Cameras, Smartphones

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Tags

denim

This picture began when I hit the camera button on my phone by mistake.  Rather than an “Oops” followed by delete. I decided to save it. 

I love the detail. It reminds of pictures I used to take with my macro lens back in my analog photography days.

The Breakup And The Surprise Meeting

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by David in Adult Children, Depression, Love and stuff, Smartphones

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Emotions, Family, Politics, Relationships

I finally broke it off. With Facebook.  I had had enough of the politics, the misinformation presented as fact, the snarky remarks from and at the people who don’t agree with the poster.  I let it get to me and decided I did not need Facebook.  I don’t need to seek the approval of total strangers  and to look for the “like” on a post as if it meant something more than mild agreement. So I deactivated my account. The next day I had a session with my counselor. He’s worked with me for almost 2 years.  I told him of the breakup and he thought it was a good idea.  He shared I’m not alone; that FB is crazy-making for a lot of  his clients.

So after my session, when we agreed that my hyperactive stomach may not be all nerves, I was on my way to the store to buy some omeprazole to handle the physical problems of hyperacidity.  On the way to the pharmacy, I realized I needed to stop by the auto repair shop to see if some knobs for Mrs CorC?’s Honda that my mechanic had ordered had come in. As I pulled in, whom should I see there but RBA, my elder son!  I did not recognize him at first, because I wasn’t expecting to see him there. He was supposed to be in Hickory, North Carolina where he was transferred about four months ago.  His wife told me a couple weeks earlier that he was negotiating a move back here. Evidently, he had accomplished it very recently.

Had anyone told me forty years ago, when RBA was an infant, that seeing my adult children would make my day, I would have looked at them in disbelief.  But it’s true. When RBA or CD come over, or even if I see them by chance, I am floating on air.  A lot of my sadness clears up.  The issues that dog me, e.g. no sexual intimacy in my marriage, fade to the background.

Mrs CorC? came home. We went out for dinner.  I read when I got home.  I purposely left the smartphone downstairs to keep it from tempting me when confronted with boredom when I went upstairs to listen to the Ten O’Clock News news, silently wanting it to end.  The hard truth is that the smartphone within easy reach has morphed into kind of a cyber-cigarette, to calm my nerves, to keep me from truly being with people.  I guess being secondary in a relationship to a tiny little computer just might generate a resentment or two.

With any luck, I will grow up before I die.

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