I have seen the future and it’s scary. Not only is NSA monitoring us but so are electronic gadgets. If we let them, they’ll control our lives, telling us it’s time for our valium, nagging us to exercise more or alerting us to some advertising special we might have missed. (“Electronics: A glimpse of what’s coming next,” by Juan Carole Peres, excerpted from PCWorld.com, The Week, 1/24/14 pg. 19)
Yesterday, for example, I called a friend to see how he was doing. His voice was so low when he answered, I thought he might be standing at the bottom of a mine shaft.
“Are you sick?” I asked, my voice registering concern.
My friend laughed. “No, no. I was afraid you might be another hustler telling me I’d won prize.”
I laughed, too, because I get those “opportunities,” all the time, usually by email. I often wonder how these folks obtain my address.
My friend’s comment got me to thinking about Juan Carole Peres’ article from PCWorld.com. (Ibid, pg. 19.) One of the new electronic features Google is about the provide its Google + customers is access to the email addresses of others on the system and – I may be reading between the lines here — phone numbers. Anyone uncomfortable with this “convenience” can drop out, but the operative word is “drop out.” Remain silent and you will automatically be “tuned in.” Which brings me to my point. In this electronic age, too often what passes as a convenience becomes a nuisance. Soon, I suspect, thousands of Google + users are about to learn that, like my friend, they are prize winners too.
(Courtesy of www.glasbergen.com)
