I Am John, and I Am a Cynic
Me-Hi, I’m John, and I’m a cynic
Crowd of people in uncomfortable chairs drinking shitty coffee from styrofoam cups-Hi John
Seemingly jolly man with buttoned long sleeve shirt and tie with a creepy smile-Tell us about your experience
Me-Well, okay then…
Today i wrote a bulletin on Myspaces bulletin system about the way privacy is handled online these days. It was long and elaborate, and within it contained the makings of a borderline conspiracy theory worthy of a tin foil hat.
At this moment, I still haven’t seen it posted.
I want to write it again, but I, in all my years of working with computers, didn’t take 12 seconds to save the damn thing. Well, I didn’t think it would get on anyways, seeing that its a News Corp owned subsidiary, Rupert wouldn’t want such things said to the fine sheep who mingle away on Myspace. The essay did have some points though that I want to iterate here, and seeing that it is an open forum, I will go along and do so.
Privacy is no longer a prized possesion, but a commodity that is bought and sold. Privacy is just a policy now, something that we forget about as we click quickly on the “I agree” box and scamper away, unknowingly hacking our personal freedoms away. We wonder where all this spam comes from, and we get filters to take our minds off the problem, but when the majority of our emails sent are unwarrented, and they somehow know how to get your email, I worry a bit.
The Patriot Act gives way too many freedoms to our government. I read the Patriot Act awhile back ago and nearly vomited. The amount of freedom this single law gives to those in power is absolutely, knee shaking scary. It’s the makings of thousands of paranoid schizophrenics the world wide, and for good reason. This law can give investigative agencies free reign to wiretap any, and all phones without legislative oversight as to who and why. It gives amazing freedom in its vagueness, and it includes passages that read like “books, records, papers, documents, and other items” where “other items” isn’t necessarily implied.
There have been reports though, not from the media but from individual sources on blogs, where Myspace and Facebook profiles were accessed, while also being set to private, to aid in investigating crimes, such as people taking pictures of themselves smoking pot, and other uses of our tax dollars. I just can’t get over how scary this law is, and how important this next presidency will be in supporting our freedoms.
What’s especially interesting about Myspace, is who owns it. News Corp (Fair, Balanced, Fox News… and now the O’Reilly Factor) owned by the most self proclaimed propagandist since William Randolph Hearst, Rupert Murdoch. Now, why would they want Myspace? When they bought it, it was actually losing a fair amount of money, gaining in popularity, yes, but buggy and nearly unusable. 580 Million dollars later, Mr. Murdoch owned the lives of millions of teenagers, and with it, access to their email addresses, IP addresses, bulletins (which often includes survey information), web searches, friend lists, job information, messages between friends… basically, every nook and cranny of the lives of these people. Sure, it’s good for advertising, but we’re talking about Rupert Murdoch here, king of swing, Manda of Propaganda, crier for fire. This was the guy who said the greatest thing to come from a war in Iraq would be 20 dollar a gallon gas. I am appalled that in this “non-monopolistic” capitalist country, we have men like this who can control what we see, hear, and say, and now we blindly hand over every piece of ourselves to an organization of fear.
The thing I am most afraid of though is, we are going about our days like this isn’t happening. Maybe it’s the media, suppressing the message of the activist and calling them childish names so that all the viewers root on big brother like cows mooing right before their heads are chopped off. We have become a society that looks down upon free thought, and conformity is no longer an option, but a necessity. Our police are not protectors of justice any longer, unless justice is now the blind lady who shackles you into namelessness and oblivion. Our school systems grade on how well we stand in line, rather than how well we question its existence. It’s scary the direction we are going, and it has to end soon before Orwell has his way.
What we need to do is find ways around these media markets, and its creations like blogging and the Internet that can drive these things. When 5 major companies control our news, our news is no longer news. What we need is teams of journalists made from the black and white keys of the Internet revolution. Web 2.0 will give us, the people, a voice. One that can be heard from every steeple and every valley but as close as the swing of a mouse. We need to free up the Internet, giving access to all, not just the subscribed few. We need to be constantly watchful, and at the same time we need to constantly write our experiences down, and write them well. We need to live outside the box. In a way, we all need to be cynics, and we need to be proud of that, because at least cynics are looking rather than waiting.
Now aghast seemingly jolly man with buttoned long sleeve shirt and tie with a creepy smile-Now how does that make you feel?
Me- …
