Google Plus Equals SkyNet: Social Networking And World Domination

Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

- Hal9000 computer (Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey)

“Talk to me!”, says I.
“Who are you?”, says the stranger.
“I am no one!”, says I.
“Sorry, I haven't got time for your pain”, says he shuffling away. Or was it a she?

So have you been invited to join Google+ yet? As of this writing, I haven't, and it's probably a good thing, too, because I can only generate so many social niceties per day, certainly not enough to spread around to all the social networking platforms that currently exist in cyberspace.

As I wrote in another post, I 'did' MySpace, now on autopilot, and I currently 'do' Facebook. I also use Twitter and share my comments on the nonsensical news of the day there (follow me, follow me). But in terms of conversation, there's not much happening there. Yes, in other words no one will talk to me. Does that phase me, you ask? Not in the least. Though I might confess to being a bit irked.

Now I was told by a Twitter expert, who is wise in the ways of social media, that I needed to 'start talking' if I wanted to get the party started. I understand completely. Just as it is with real social circles, some folks are reticent to engage in pleasantries with someone who talks to himself.

“Hello!? Hello!? I'm alive over here!”, I might tweet. The silence is deafening. Not even a retweet.
An email soon finds it's way to my inbox with the subject line reading “follow me and I'll follow you”. It's from 'dudecashwise362'. “Where are we going?” I reply in an email. No response.

Ok. you all know how it goes. Having something interesting, witty, or life affirming to say won't get you very far in social networking, unless you are a celebrity and don't mind commenting in passing on what you ate for brunch. Though, if you really are a celebrity, you’d no doubt have someone else do the tweeting  for you, and eat your lunch for you, as well (#winning).

If you are a 'no one', however, then there is only so much self abuse you can take by 'tweeting' to a flock of 'we don't care' celebrity stools. Yes, celebritism is alive and well, and those who worship every celebrity dropping certainly have no time for you.

So, the big question, however, is do I really want to get the 'party' started, especially with celebrity intensive zombie types? I must confess that these days I'm not much in the 'party' mood; I'm in the writing mood. So, do I really want to put my creative energies into blithering banter, glib chitchat and all manners of cyber persiflage? I'd say no. If I did, I'd probably have no time for my blog ... which most likely no on reads, except for 'search bots'. Anyway, zombies, by the way, are not really big on conversation; they just want to eat your brain … which leads me to my next point.

Google+ makes me nervous. Honestly. Use of an arithmetic function seems less social oriented and more machine language enamored. Machines are not social creatures. They interface. Not very sexy.

We've seen this before with Google Wave and Google Buzz. If anything, Google+ seems a bit more insidious, especially in that Google already it's spindly talons into all forms of online services. Yes, Google's aim is to make this personal. It doesn't want to own just your email, blogs, videos, RSS feeds, surf and search habits, cloud based personal and business documents, and both computer and mobile telephony operating systems. It wants the whole ball of wax: your online social identity and that of our friends and business colleagues, as well as theirs, and theirs, and theirs, and so on, and so on, and so on. It also wants control of your applications and hardware. Sound familiar?

Cloud based computing? Give me a break! It seems that Google's intentions have gone far beyond creating its own version of George Orwell's dystopian society in his novel 1984. Pulling a “Big Brother is watching you” number on us by keeping up under surveillance and controlling our 'freedom of  choice' via media streaming (Youtube and Adwords, for example) is bad enough. But I suspect, that Google want's even more... or is even more.

Some of you have seen films such as the Matrix (Keannu Reeves: Whoa!) or the Terminator (SkyNet). Maybe you've watched Battlestar Galactica on TV and are weary of 'cylons' lurking around every corner. Remember HAL9000, the paranoid and homicidal sentient computer from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey? What about the supercomputer, WOPR, from the film Wargames? I could even mention an odd film called Demon Seed, but that would be really perverse!

In these films, the names change and the plots may be different, but the one salient feature these all have in common is the subjugation of the human masses by an authoritarian body that knows all via technology.

Is Google a burgeoning SkyNet? Is Google really just taking names, numbers, and personal data, biding its time under false pretenses, waiting for the moment to attack?

My fellow 'Netizens', now is the time for a preemptive strike against what is no doubt some artificial intelligence lurking in the Google controlled and operated web clouds. Now is the time to send a clear message to all of humanity to pull the plug on Google and it's designs for world domination. At the very least, tell Google+ that we don't want it horning in on our social circles. I'd tell you to write your congressman, but he's probably too busy sexting someone.

Lord! And they say the hackers are the bad guys! (Cue the Love Boat theme)....
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PS. Thanks for reading. Seriously,  what is your take on Google+? Is it me or is Google really desperate here? Are you concerned about why you haven't received an invitation, or are you still trying to figure out what Tumblr is? Let me know.

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Not Born On The Fourth Of July

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

- Francis Scott Key, The Star Spangled Spammer

Today is Independence Day for the United States of America. It's also two days before my birthday. I thought I'd just mention that. Yes, I could have been a Yankee Doodle Dandy, born on the 4^th of July. My mom had gone into the hospital on the day with contractions. I once asked her about being in labor on the holiday, but she just claims she remember being sick with nausea, and throwing up while a trailer for the film, 'Mutiny On The Bounty', was being shown on TV.

Meanwhile, a little rambunctious bouncing baby boy, yet to be born, bided his time and stayed put, opting to be fashionably late. Mutiny on Bounty, indeed! Actually, this wasn't my mom's first brush with near-holiday births; years before, my sister was born on December 30^th, missing out on a New Years birth by oh so little. So near misses was pretty much par for the course for our mother, as was our penchant to screw with her timing.

Anyway, even though I am miles away from the land of my birth, I'll still celebrate, but not because I'm patriotic or proud to be an American. Mainly, it's because it's a good excuse to light some sparklers with my kids and then eat hotdogs, 'Boston' baked beans, potato salad, apple pie, and corn on the cob, with abandon and without waist line related guilt. Actually, I was thinking of macaroni and cheese, too. Maybe pick a few Beach Boys tunes on the guitar. Definitely do Starbucks later in the evening and fret over the fact that due to the NFL lockout, there still is no football in sight for the near future.

Yes, so this is apparently what my nationalism has been reduced to: food, football, sparkly things and rock n' roll. Oh, I forgot to mention one more item, angst. Relatedly, the other day, I ate at McDonald’s, which to be honest is something I rarely do. I had a Big Mac. It was tasteless. It was filling, but completely tasteless. It made me angry to think that this is what 'Americanism' has been reduced to: feeling bloated and completely unsatisfied.

The truth is that being an American has lost much meaning for me over the years, and it's not just because I happen to live abroad. I think it's because it has become harder and harder for me to identify

exactly with what 'being American' actually means, and for that matter, what 'America' actually stands for.

It's funny because if you ask some non-Americans to define the United States you will most certainly glean a clear stream of celebritism, fashion, and food: John Wayne, Blue Jeans, Marilyn Monroe, Hollywood, McDonald's, Sneakers, MTV, Coca Cola, Mickey Mouse, Starbucks, Elvis Presley, NBA, etc. But along with these highly marketed American icons, you'd also reap the following string of 'less than niceties': bourgeois capitalists, atom bomb droppers, communist bashers, purists, ethnocentric boors, gun-toting fanatics, flip-flop wearing heart attacks waiting to happen.

Now in truth, I can't speak for most Americans. In fact, neither can most Americans probably speak for each other. However, for this American, the definition of 'being American' seems lost. I grew up in very apathetic and coma inducing times. Torn between idealistic 'communitarianism values' of the 1960s and 'atomized individualism' of the 1970s, the 'Me Decade'*, I pretty much sought escape into music, television, radio, and science fiction. I was very interested in current affairs and so I devoured the newspaper daily, but spent much of my schooling years staring out the window. Patriotism to me was hearing the National Anthem played before watching a football or baseball game, eating turkey on Thanksgiving, and watching fireworks on the 4^th of July. Oh, and eating hot dogs, too.

Really, if there ever was any flag waving sentiment in me, it was most likely quashed by my understanding that television and radio was being censored in my youth, my seeing pictures of the Vietnam war on the news, my reading Mad Magazine, and my being bored terminally with the Watergate trials on TV. I also blame 'disco', but that's another story.

The point is that I understood that the mood of the country suggested that being Patriotic just wasn't cool ... unless you were Johnny Cash, who was very cool to me. Being indifferent was more the fashion. Being patriotic to some meant buying miniature 'made in Japan' copies of 'Old Glory' from Kmart to hang on their mail boxes on some national holidays. Yes, the American Flag became just another holiday ornament to be brought out on occasion, like Christmas tree lights and Jack-O-Lanterns. Of course, some hung from the wheelchairs of some down and out Vietnam Vets I remember seeing panhandling downtown. Not a very patriotic image, I'm sure you'll agree, but one that still lingers as a poor stereotype even today.

The 'dream' of the 60s became very commercialized in the 70s, and American life settled into 'let's go to the mall' to get a quality of life that only a credit card can buy, and the neighbors next door already owned. In many respects, that was fine with me and many other Americans, because the mall was just another avenue for escapism; a happy place to go to numb the numbness of knowing that we had all sold out.

How did we end up this way? How is it that we have such short memories? Our country is less than 250 years old, and still today, there are many political pundits who argue over interpreting just what it was the framers of our grand Constitution had in mind with certain words and phrases. What is it that caused this dementia of mind and spirit in some?

I'll offer that 'Big Business', government interest and backroom politics merged to ensure that the idealism of any form of alternative culture was replaced by materialism and self-interest. The mass media, conservative and liberal, became just another tool to manipulate the masses to consume, and also distract them from the reality that the 'powers that be' had become less a government for the people and of the people, and more something akin to a mega-multinational corporation, whose financial bottom line matters more than its citizens and the environment they live in. Liberty, freedoms, rights and even democracy don't really enter it.

The Statue of Liberty bears the words, "Give me your tired, your poor,your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Those words on Lady Liberty should stand for more than just a sales pitch for McDonald's Happy Meals, Allstate Insurance, Ford Motor Vehicles and Shell Oil.

As I'm writing this, an undetermined amount of crude oil has been pouring into the Yellowstone River near Billings, Montana, courtesy of an ExxonMobil pipeline leak. Happy Birthday, America. Yes, there are many reasons why I celebrate my country’s independence day. Very few of them have anything to with July 4th and American Independence.

I could go on, but my hotdogs are starting to blister.

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PS. Thanks for reading. What does being American mean to you? How do you celebrate Independence Day? Do you feel feel patriotic or patronized? Let me know!

* Tom Wolfe, The "Me" Decade and the Third Great Awakening". From the August 23, 1976 issueof New York Magazine.

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Duck, Cover, Kiss Your Butt Goodbye. Really!

“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk.” - Ronald Reagan

Yesterday, there were a couple news articles that caught my attention. The first was about residents from Fukushima nuclear disaster area who have radioactive urine. I don't know about you, but that makes my hair stand on end. It's just one more reason why I'm happy I don't have a microwave oven and am trying to limit my mobile phone use. Really.

The other troubling news item was an article suggesting that US nuclear evacuation plans haven't been updated to account for population growth. It seems that according to statistics based on the US Census information, urban populations around nuclear power plant facilities have ballooned 450 percent. So what that means is that if you live in an area near a nuclear power plant and your regular drive home from work is a slow, painful and maddening exercise of slowly crawling along with bumper to bumper 'stop and go' congested rush hour traffic … well, then you already know what your evacuation route driving conditions will be in the event of a nuclear accident, such as a meltdown. Seriously. Really.

If you are one of those types that like to wave off 'doom and gloom' scenarios dismissing them as 'what if' fantasies, then I guess I need to remind you of the disasters at Three-Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima disasters. Yes, nuclear power plants are not the fool-proof safe facilities that governments and industries purport them to be. Really.

Let's turn up the 'worry wart' factor just a few notches. Have you heard about all those airplanes that airlines routinely fly past their original life expectancy? It's the same thing with nuclear power plants. Today, in the United States alone, there are 104 nuclear power plants. The older ones still in operation today and built in the 50's, 60s' and 70's have, or maybe I should say had, an operational life of 30 years. The statistical probabilities for something mechanical to go wrong with them, let alone human error, increases significantly with each passing day of prolonged operation. They are disasters waiting to happen. Really.

Oh yes, I mentioned human error. Yes, humans are bound to get it wrong, maybe not every time, but obviously, we are not machines. Yes, we have computers to help us out these days, yet many often forget that humans also program and design those computers. And, as any computer programmer or hacker might tell you 'garbage in-garbage out'. Really.

Governments and 'Big Business' are certainly human creations. So is the oxymoron, military intelligence. And, in this respect I'm always amazed by how some people are able to speak in absolute terms about things they know very little about ... or more insidiously, don't want you to know about. For example, beginning in early 1950s, United States children were taught to “Duck and Cover” in the event of a nuclear weapon detonation. As if lying face-down, assuming a fetal position and covering their heads with their hands, would actually save them from being irradiated. Really.

History can teach us many things to prevent us from repeating the same bone-head mistakes again and again and again, ad nauseum. The history is atomic energy yields many examples. I would start at the beginning but we all basically we know what kind of devastation an atomic bomb can wreak. We've seen it's destructive power in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Most of the fathers of atomic energy eventually condemned its development and use, especially for military purposes. Nevertheless, the 'powers that be' and those who would profit from the development of nuclear power said 'we can do better', especially in the face of international competition. And so the creation of the thermonuclear bomb, also known as the hydrogen bomb, was commissioned, carrying with it the strength of almost 60 atomic bombs. Really.

Harnessing nuclear energy was bad enough mainly for purposes of military muscle flexing, but eventually, wouldn't you know it, the powers that be said, “hey we can actually sell this stuff!” And, before you knew it, nuclear power stations were popping up all over the place. Moreover, regular people wanted the ability to nuke things, too. So microwave ovens were created for us all to nuke our food and to vent our frustrations on very small objects. Really.

Ever microwave a potato in the oven a bit too long? It becomes so dried out and hard it can break your teeth if you aren't careful. Similarly, it's been my opinion for many years that nuclear power is just too dangerous. I base this opinion not only the great potential it has to … um … put it lightly … kill people, but also on the fact that most of of people who would manage or regulate it are bone-heads. Really.

What concerns me also is how much of the public really want to stick their heads in the sand in denial because nuclear energy might save them some money on their monthly electric bill, and so they 'want to believe' that nuclear power is safe. They don't want to hear about the victims of Chernobyl or read about radioactive urine. These types just assume that in the case of an accidental nuclear meltdown in their area, they will probably be told to take some boric acid and a few extra vitamins, and their lives will go on their merry way. By the way, did you know that boric acid is a pretty good roach killer and that roaches are probably the only living species that will survive a nuclear holocaust? Really.

Wisdom suggests that if you play with fire, you will get burned. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but at some point in the future. I worry that whether it's the laws of probability or just 'Murphy's Law', nuclear power's destructive energy will eventually burn us all. Big Business is just too willing to cut corners on safety to protect their 'bottom-line', and regulatory governmental agencies are just too slow moving, lackadaisical and imbecilic to really protect the public. If you need proof, look no further than the 'Duck and Cover'* campaign and the fact that the former United States president, George W. Bush, Jr, couldn't even pronounce the word 'nuclear' correctly. Really.

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Links For Your Consideration:

Resources related to the 2011 Japan Crisis - How To Help:
http://www.google.com/crisisresponse/japanquake2011.html

If you think nuclear power plans are safe:
http://www.stopfplnow.org/

Pros and cons of nuclear power:
http://timeforchange.org/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-power-and-sustainability

Nuclear Power: Dangerous, Dirty & Expensive- 20 Key Facts
http://peaceandjusticeonline.org/2011/05/19/nuclear-power-dangerous-dirty-expensive-20-key-facts/


Wikipedia page on nuclear and radiation accidents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents

PS. Thanks for reading. Are you worried that the mismanagement of nuclear power will kill us all, or do you think a bigger worry is the radiation from our mobile/cell phones? Who are you scared more of 'Big Business', inept government or Godzilla? Let me know. Really!

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*Yes, I know that part of the ideology of the 'Duck and Cover' mantra was to protect children from flying shrapnel should they stand up and look towards the source of the 'flash'. A better preventative measure would have been to not develop nuclear weapons and jump start an arms race with other countries, in the first place.

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