True Ancestor

The Wikileaks Hangover

One of the perplexing truths of human history is that even the most noble aspirations get turned to the most devious ends. Nothing endowed with a will of its own, or placed in the hands of a being possessed of such will, ever stays purely good or purely evil for very long, if it even started out that way.

To my mind, the protestations of transparency by the wizards of Wikileaks are dangerously disingenuous -- such profound opacity from the champions of transparency is not to be trusted. The necessary evil of dipomacy has always depended on simple veils and elaborate obfuscations. Shorn of those elements, none of the players in the diplomatic game is safe.The release of sensitive communications will cost the lives of mid-level operatives and will ensure that government retreats further from the reach of its own citizens.

There's only one good that can come of this: 

Less communication will be trusted to technology. Diplomacy, and its subsequent analysis, will be carried on in face-to-face encounters. Words and gestures will be synthesized and analyzed using sensory apparatus. Conversations will be had.

The near-term result of Wikileaks -- and the constant invasions of privacy that our media, electronic and otherwise, virtually and ceaselessly demand -- is that people will have to resort, once again, to talking with and touching each other, in direct encounter and in each other's physical presence, in real time.

The sad part is that they will have to do so out of the range of gunship helicopters and in rooms swept for electronics.The range of human discourse and human freedom is shrinking exponentially. It will survive, but it will have to do so out of the reach of all the technology whose invention began with a burst of creativity and an altruistic dream of universal benefit.

Soon we will live in bubbles, and only speak and interact within those bubbles.

Otherwise, nothing will be sacred, and nothing real will be spoken, ever again.

--T.A.

Is it just the Germans, or are we all addicts?

A new survey says most Germans between the age of 19-29 would, if compelled, choose Internet or mobile phone access over their significant others or their cars.

The German broadband association Bitkom conducted the survey. Its head was then quick to say that the Internet actually helps build social relationships.

Yeah. So does my semi-automatic.

Actually, one in two respondents to the survey said they'd made new friends thanks to chat forums and Internet communities.

I wonder if those respondents, like the head of Bitkom himself, get a little nervous if they're on vacation somewhere that doesn't have Internet access.

Or is there such a thing?

And you? How long are you away from the i-world before you start sweating and looking around for an Internet cafe?

--T.A.

IM Invasion

Turned on my computer a few mornings back; opened Mozilla Firefox.

Then AIM Instant Messaging took over.

It commandeered my keyboard. Insisted I pay attention to it. Logged my son on, and he immediately began getting chatty messages from schoolmates (mostly girls, I believe).

I kept closing the damn thing, and yet it had made itself my home page, so I had to open Explorer in order to get away from it. Every time I went back, there was another chatty message, asking Gabe why he wasn't responding. Eventually, one petulant pre-teen wrote:

"Asshole :P"

I yelled downstairs for Gabe, home because school was canceled because of a snowstorm. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY COMPUTER?"

"Hunh?," he said, in a TV coma.

"GET UP HERE NOW," I barked.

And I wrote back to the petulant pre-teen:

"This is Gabe's dad. Please don't use that language. You never know who may be on the computer."

I then managed to change AIM's demonic behavior.

Too bad I couldn't do the same for the petulant pre-teen.

--T.A.

Text-parenting

With two daughters away at college now -- and with me back in school, with classmates not much older than said daughters -- I've begun to adapt to the next generation's means of staying in touch.

The Daughters, like their colleagues, seem to communicate via the following means and media, ranked in order of frequency of use:

1. Cell phone: calls
2. Cell phone: texting
3. Facebook
4. E-mail
5. Twitter
6. Blogs
7. Carrier pigeon
8. Two cans attached by a string
9. ESP
10. Land line
11. Face-to-face interaction

Growing up next to the University of Chicago, my friends and I always laughed at how U of C students would cross the street reading a book, never looking up as they stepped into traffic. Not much has changed in the last few decades -- only now U of C students plunge into traffic not reading, but texting or talking on their cell phones.

I took two lessons from this: first, concentrate on crossing the damn street. Second -- stay in touch with the Daughters by text!

This has been jolly good fun for me. I can text them from a class I'm sitting in, furtively working my thumbs, and set their phones a-buzzing in classes they're sitting in half a continent away. They usually answer a text within moments, painting a quick Impressionist image of that moment in their harried lives.

If I want to write a longer, more parental missive, I'll e-mail them. Sometimes it takes them days to answer. But when they do, they fill in more blanks, paint a fuller picture of what's occupying their time and preoccupying their minds. They also usually attach a paper they want me to read and edit.

I stay far away from their Facebook pages. Middle Daughter won't even befriend me! (At some point, she'll be applying for jobs and have to take off all those incriminating pictures . . .)

Today's classroom buzzes and hums. The days of single-minded absorption are over. The young study with their iPods pumping music into their crania, their cell phones mumbling and twitching like a bound-and-gagged mafia stool-pigeon.

I like letting the daughters know I'm thinking of them, in less than 100 characters.

That's a good thing . . . right?

--T.A.

Fears for the "Facebook Generation"

Mark Vernon reports (via Medical News Today) on a predictable but still (to me) scary phenomenon: the quick pace and shifting identities of Internet social networking sites are making the "real world boring and unstimulating" to an entire generation weaned on Facebook, MySpace and the like.

Dr. Himanshu Tyagi is quoted as saying that social networking allows for a quick, almost Vulcan mind-meld (see instructional photo below) that's causing an entire generation to develop, and attach meaning to, relationships that we can't recognize and whose sometimes catastrophic effects we aren't addressing. Deprived of sensory information expressed in body language and vocal intonation, and cloaked in relative anonymity, people born after 1990 swim in and out of deep intimacy in a way that doesn't let relationships take root -- but lets emotional wounds penetrate deeply into their fragile, still-forming psyches.

Is this just the fuddy-duddy reaction of the older generation to a shift in social conventions -- or is it something more insidious? Dr. Tyagi ascribes to online social networking a fast-moving and sometimes lethal herd mentality, responsible for, among other things, group suicides. On the other hand, as Vernon notes, Dr. Tyagi himself is the founder of an online professional network with more than 60,000 subscribers.

I'm relieved that Gabe doesn't go in for this stuff. At a time when his friends are beginning to text and IM compulsively, he's indifferent at best. "If they really want to talk to me," he said recently, "they'll see me in school tomorrow." Does this put him at a social disadvantage (not that he'd care)? How does a misanthrope maintain his fragile misanthropy in an age of cell phones, instant messages and online networking?

What do you think: are we building ourselves a Matrix of social mirages? Or are we just doing the same old thing in a new way? Do we legislate limits? Monitor and restrict our kids' ability to network in this way? Isn't this little more than peeing on a forest fire?

--T.A.

The Revolution Will Not Be Turbo-charged

I was watching my rampaging White Sox on TV a couple of nights ago and noticed something that any disciplined TV-watcher has probably noticed for awhile now: automobile adds are using phrases redolent of American patriotism and independence in their ad campaigns. Cadillac's tag line is "Life. Liberty. And the Pursuit." Chevrolet promises "An American Revolution." A shade less derivative but no less mock-inspirational, Chrysler says, "Let's Refuel America."

The irony is beyond belief. It seems Cadillac is after a younger demographic with this campaign: a young, George Michael-ish bachelor zooms through the deserted neon canyons of an anonymous cityscape, his internal monologue full of self-congratulation for the wisdom of his purchase of a Cadillac. This ad campaign must be a decade behind the times (ergo the George Michael reference). Younger drivers don't give a turd about these enormous, sclerotic gas-guzzlers driven by Bubbies and Zadies all over the land: they want cars that manage to perform reasonably well while using less gas. That would make them feel pretty cool.

Chevrolet, like Ford, is really all about its trucks, and so this ad campaign at least launches a cluster-bomb toward what it perceives as the patriotic heartland: Hillary-voting, Andrea Mitchell-hating redneck country. Meanwhile, you have to really be an auto-geek (or have a son that's turning into one) to learn that Chevy is going to move ahead with its production of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt in 2010. Talk about an American revolution: a car company actually doing something about mobility, economy and environmental stewardship! I must be dreaming.

As for Chrysler: you'll be shocked to learn that it's not really refueling America; it's offering a fixed price for unleaded and diesel to go along with its vehicles. Thanks for the diesel deal, guys. Now what about all the health problems attributed to it?

As scary as he can sometimes be, I think Charles Krauthammer was right on this issue: create a U.S. energy tax that keeps gasoline above the panic "price point" (which appears to be about $4 a gallon) so that we incentivize conservation and alternative fuel technology, rather than subsidizing oil companies and emirates.  

Now that's life, liberty and the pursuit.

--T.A.

Fade to Black(berry)

Ah, one could hear the cries of anguish and withdrawal all over North America today, as service on the ubiquitous Blackberry suffered a massive outage.

I didn't even notice. Not til I saw this article. By then I was safely ensconced in the family room, trolling restlessly for news while Gabe watched an episode of Family Guy that he must already have seen five times.

I feel somewhat reclusive, even misanthropic lately. I let loose a muffled hurrah when networks go down or airports grind to a halt in abysmal weather. I'm cheered by empty big-box stores and feel strangely vindicated by abandoned, unfinished condo developments. I confess that, when in this frame of mind, I even find plunges in the stock market reassuring: after all, I think to myself, if everything's going to go to hell in a handbasket, why shouldn't it be obvious?

And speaking of where everything's going -- get a load of all the alarming (alarmist?) medical news: the long decline in heart disease rates is over, it appears; and those of us who lost our virginity either quite early or quite late are going to suffer more health problems and greater sexual dysfunction.

Take your pick: the moral of the story is --

• Too much information is bad for the soul
• Too much information distorts the truth and makes every finding sound like an ominous trend
• Nothing matters as much as everything seems to matter
• Get yer head outta yer butt
• Explicit movies and lyrics are a plot by Big Pharma to sell us Viagra
• It's all one, big Oliver-Stone like conspiracy
• I'm not getting enough sleep

--T.A.

Facebook and Family

I seem to have crossed some invisible, digital line with my daughters by creating a Facebook page.

Oldest Daughter, whom we'll soon be visiting in London, has not responded to my request for Facebook friendship (extended several days ago). Middle Daughter was absolutely horrified to peek over my shoulder at home the other evening and find me navigating around Facebook.

"What are you doing?! You're on Facebook?! Why?!!"

Her tone indicated that there'd be no good answer to that question, but I did my best: I explained that friends of mine were on facebook, far-flung relatives stay in touch with it, authors are on it (some are in several of those categories at once); in short, in some ways it's far more efficient for staying in touch than e-mail, especially if you want to communicate with a group of people (family, people with similar interests, etc.).

"Oh, and by the way," I said, "when I search for you on Facebook, you're nowhere to be found."

"Ah-hah!," she crowed. "That's because I don't want you to find me!" Middle Daughter has disguised her identity. And she explained why: friends can find her, but employers -- or teachers, or parents, or perverts (which are all really one and the same, as far as she's concerned) -- cannot.

Then Middle Daughter told me how to find her page. I find that I don't want to look at it. There are some things about your kids that you really are better off not knowing, some circles you're better off not peeping into. Especially when those kids are over 18 and generally solid citizens, as The Daughters are.

It's funny how sites like Facebook start for exclusive communities and then cannot resist the breach of exclusivity. The Web is either horribly perverted, relentlessly democratic or neurotically secretive. I work under the assumption that my every keystroke will someday be discoverable, and I have to both be careful and inure myself to that concern.

So piss off.

No, just kidding! Really!

--T.A.

"Our universe might be somebody else's hobby."

Movie franchises like The Matrix, Terminator and Back to the Future indicate our collective suspicion that time is a loop, not a line, and that somehow technology and String Theory will help us explode, not merely explore, our primitive theologies.

(For fans with long memories, perhaps the most touching example of this cinematic theorizing was the short 1993 made-for-TV movie The Whole Shebang, starring Mark Linn-Baker as a flustered graduate student whose doctoral thesis is -- the creation of the Universe.)

A philosopher at Oxford University has developed a compelling hypothesis which suggests not that we might someday be able to simulate ourselves, but that we ourselves are simulations.

Read this Times piece and let its message sink in: although we may, by mid-century, have a computer that simulates all of us, we may already be just one phylum in a genus of simulations stretching backwards and forwards throughout all of Time -- which may itself be a simulation.

Thanks to Colorado Charlie for destroying my workday. Of course, it only resembles a workday...

--T.A.

Wii!!!

Last night, Gabe's nieces brought over an early birthday present: the Nintendo Wii.

My verdict: What a ridiculous piece of crap. What an unncessary luxury. What a waste of time.

What a cool toy.

Probably my favorite thing about it -- aside from the fact that you might actually burn, say, a dozen calories during the course of a video game -- is that you can customize little individual players, and have them compete in a little universe of players with very distinctive facial features, but hands and feet that are mysteriously detached from the rest of their bodies.

Just as we're detached from our cartoon selves, our cartoon selves' extremities are detached from their bodies, making an entire shiny, scrubbed universe of tiny but crucial detachments from reality (just look at these people staring at their games and you can see how detached from reality we can become).

Much hilarity ensued last night, as the nieces worked with us to create players representing (and resembling) everyone in our family. My goateed, balding alter ego was trounced by Gabe's boyish, almond-eyed doppelganger in three out of four contests.

While the games were fun, it was the creation of alternative selves that was the highlight of the evening.

Now, if I could just get mine to hit a backhand...

--T.A.