Information Co-Op

For the last couple of weeks it seems like there has been more news stories and more people talking about social networking in a different way than I have heard a lot of before. More and more people are starting to get really annoyed, I think, with the fact that we have lost all sense of privacy. Others, such as M. Cheb have taken a slightly more bleak look on the issue. So I figured I would give my two cents on the subject.

I don't really use facebook that much. I read it everyday, but I don't put much up there. I don't send many messages through it, I don't write that many comments, and I hardly ever leave a status update. But it is still part of my daily internet routine. The privacy issues aside, I think it is still a useful way to keep up with people. Still, I wonder if it is worth the risk. Someone that I barely know can be on my friend list and tag me in a compromising photo. That photo is then linked to my page, where anyone else on my friend list can see it. It's sort of like getting your photo on the front page every single time you do something stupid. And if you are me, you do stupid things on a regular enough basis for that to be a problem.

Anonymity is gone on the internet. Where once thousands of faceless dorks gathered and chatted and traded copywriten files, we now have a face. That face might be nothing more than an IP number, but it is still a face. And if people want to, they can find you, and they can destroy you. Granted that part about them destroying you is probably not going to happen, but you never can tell.

The thing is, it was something that probably was bound to happen, one way or another. Not just because the longer people have an internet connection the more information they are likely to put into the web, but because since the beginning people have been trying to find a way to humanize the other users on the internet. We couldn't exist in a digital world where everyone was able to pretend to be anyone. Eventually we had to learn to be ourselves, even while we surfed the web.

People don't like anonymous other people. Some part of our brain needs to know who we are dealing with. There are hours and hours that I could spend on why that is, or at least why I think that is, but I won't get into that now. Suffice to say that the more information we know about someone else the better we feel about that person. The problem comes in when there are things that you don't want other people to know about you.

It seems as though it would be so damn easy to enjoy the internet and not give out too much information. You just couldn't buy things online, and you'd have to set up a free email account that was only to be used when you had to sign up at some website. Avoid social networking altogether and you'd be okay. But then you find out that google is saving every internet search you've ever done (I tried to find a news article to link to that has something about that in there, but I used google search and for some reason nothing came up... but you can read about why you should be terrified of google) and you start to think that maybe, just maybe, privacy isn't an option anymore.

Of course we could all say fuck it. We could collectively say that we don't want everything we are doing to be tracked directly back to us and forgo the internet as much as possible. Or we could all, and this seems more likely, say that we are willing to give up online privacy in exchange for being able to have a computer that can access all the cat related videos we could ever possibly want.

I don't have any answers about any of this. I am a private person. But I have always been pretty paranoid about computer stuff. The fact that they really can and are tracking my searches doesn't surprise me. The fact that the police can create a fake profile and friend a friend of mine on facebook to spy on me doesn't surprise me. The fact that employers will search the webs for me doesn't surprise me.

I will probably have to abandon facebook because it is just too public at some point. And yet, a blog like this, I have no problem keeping up. And here I reveal much, much more about myself than I do on facebook. But at least I am the one who decides what is and is not going to be available from here. I wish people would go back to blogging. Blogging is basically an archaic ritual at this point, and only a few of us seem to remember what the point of it ever really was. Social networking sights are all about what you are doing right then, at that moment. They are all about the day to day life of an average person, being broadcast to the world for some strange reason. But blogs are not about what you are doing, they are about what you are thinking. And what people are thinking, even if it is on a day to day basis, has much more of a lasting impact than me telling all my friends that the sandwich I just ate was a little dry.

Important Noises

I've decided that I need to have a place that I can go and sit and be totally alone. Just a place with a fountain and enough foliage that I can pretend that I don't live in a city for a few minutes. It took me a long time to realize that that was really what I wanted when I was going out to Bibo. I got a few minutes behind the Mt. Rose store by myself and I could think and write out some random thoughts. Then some random middle aged women wandered out and started talking about dog parks and sprained ankles. I have trouble just turning everything off and sitting back in my own apartment, even when I am alone. There are just too many distractions. If I am not writing then I am watching TV or playing video games. I can't seem to sit down and quietly collect my thoughts anymore.

There aren't enough spots like that in the world anymore. I mean, there are a lot of places people can go and sit and be alone with their thoughts, but not in cities. And I don't want to have to drive out to a mountain range and then go on a ten mile hike just to have five minutes to clear my head. Not to mention as soon as I got up there some family with the obligatory two and a half children would wander up, and they'd see me and come walking up and then get all in my face crying about how their child has just been brutally ripped in half by a bear and pleading with me to put the legs back on. Just put the legs back on!

Today has not been a great day. I'm trying to get through it, but it just sort of keeps going on. Every time I sit down to try to write about how pissed off I've been at the world all day it just makes me angrier. I tried to write a joke here, but they come off sounding bitter and self-pitying when I write them whilst feeling angry at everything. I suppose this will have to be enough blog for now.

Probably not Ok

Someone on facebook suggested a page to me called "why test on animals when we have pedophiles in prison?" Now, I have, in the past, suggested that pedophiles be sent to a gorilla infested island twenty miles off of the mainland and their only way off was through shark infested waters. Also, lasers were involved somehow. But that wasn't a real suggestion. More like a pitch for a reality show, a reality show I would probably watch.

I know that sexual molestation of children is possibly the worst crime that could be committed. It fucks people up for life. Even if they grow into successful adults, they are still going to have a lot of horrible things happen to them as teenagers as a result of how their world view got all screwed up from the sexual assault. I'm not defending it. But at the same time, pedophiles are people, too. And although most people would probably rather share a relaxing meal with Osama Bin Laden than with any pedophile, they still have rights.

The criminal justice system, I think, can be used as a way to bring people back into society in a positive way. I think that people really can be redeemed in prison. The problem is that we aren't making any real effort to do that. Changing a person is a process that can take many years. Prisoners, though, have a lot of free time. But the whole system needs to be revamped.

I believe that criminals could be taught to come out of prison and re-join society in a positive way. We can give them job training, counselling, and just some general guidance. And that is what we should be doing. There is no sense in locking someone up if all it is going to do is put them in a situation where the only way they can make money is through more crime.

So long as I am going to be paying taxes I would rather have it going towards a positive outcome for the criminal, in the end, than a bad one. Testing products on people that seem like the scum of the earth might seem like a good alternative to testing them on innocent bunnies, but you are sacrificing everything that makes us human if you do that. The only thing that separates us from the rabbits is that we care about what happens to our fellow human beings. A rabbit doesn't care if some other rabbit gets turned into stew or has perfume sprayed in its eyes. We have to be better than the rabbits. We have to understand that it isn't okay to treat any other human like an animal.

This has to, and does, apply to terrorists as well. Right now terrorists are our enemies. American has had her share of enemies over the years. And you know what happens after every war? We say that we should have treated our enemy with more respect. Sure, kill them if that is what you got to do, but treat the prisoners with respect. We don't need to torture them to get information out of them. We don't need to do things to them that we would never do to another person. We need to treat them like humans. Humans that are on the wrong side of a fight, maybe, but humans none the less.

Testing products on inmates is tantamount to torture. Testing it on animals is tantamount to torture as well. I'm not saying that it is right to test on animals, but I am saying that it is wrong to test on humans.

End Rant.