Tag: Internet

The Homily: A Growing Menace

home4You know you’re in trouble when you long for the days of bumper sticker politics.  Way back when, it was pretty easy to “End Apartheid Now!” or “Free Tibet!”  You simply honked and moved on.  After all, you never saw “Enslave Tibet Forever” slapped on the ass of anybody’s automobile.  Besides, nobody believed that Bill Clinton’s limo would ever pull up behind you and he’d turn to Hillary and say, “Hey!  That Tibet deal sounds like a good idea.  Let’s call the Pentagon!”  Bumper stickering was a lot more symbolic than that.  Regardless, those simple days are gone.  Occasionally, you still see an itty-bitty billboard under the turn signal of an old pickup truck or clichéd VW van, but, in general, the streets have been cleared of this kind of pie-in-the-sky nonsense.  Unfortunately, now we have to deal with the replacement therapy.

These days, people have forsaken their vehicles as the medium of choice and are busy spreading the word electronically.  Not only that, but they’ve abandoned Tibet, Blood for Oil and Nelson Mandela to pursue the true path of enlightenment and, more importantly, pass it on to you.  You can’t go six cyber centimetres in this world without running into some idiot affirmation on how to be a better person or live a better life.  These digital drive-bys are very much like the real thing: they might not be intended for you, but if you’re in the general vicinity, you’re going to get caught in the crossfire.  The problem is they have nothing to do with you.  In fact, you’re irrelevant.

People aren’t tossing these Post New Age homilies all over The Net because they home2think you don’t realize that “life is like a box of chocolates…”  Nor are they “sharing” because they’re worried you may have forgotten that “your smile should change the world, not the other way around.”  Actually, that’s the least of their concerns.  Unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are honestly trying to save your soul (annoying as that may seem) these Internet evangelists don’t give a damn about you. They’re posting this stuff promiscuously to proclaim their own high level of enlightenment.  They want you — and everybody else with Wifi — to know that they’ve achieved Maximum Awareness.  And as caring, sharing children of the 21st century, their expanded consciousness just natural overflows into all areas of their lives.

I know there are some people who believe this crap and even those who don’t, have the right to say as they please.  The thing is, though, unlike bumper stickers, whose message was confined to the asphalt and gone at the next left turn, these sermonettes are, first of all, front and centre and secondly permanent fixtures.  It’s like being trapped in an Elsinore elevator with Polonius.  “Life is art: paint your dreams.” “Promote what you love; don’t bash what you hate.”  “Don’t judge…”  “Avoid wrong…” “Eat the penguin…” “Ride the donkey…”  It’s endless and they’re all so staggeringly simple minded, it’s scary.

home3In an age when Playboy Bunny Dumb is considered a career choice, we are in danger of stupiding ourselves to death.  Throwing meaningless homilies into the mix is just accelerating the process.  If we’re not careful, one of these days, “A smile is the prettiest thing you’ll ever wear” is going to sound profound.   When that happens, it’s “abandon all hope, ye who enter here” because we’ll be in Beauty Queen Hell!

The Internet, Secrecy and the United Nations

secrets2We all have secrets.  Over the years, every one of us has collected a list of things we’ve done, said or maybe even just thought that we kinda keep to ourselves.  We all have our individual “reasons” for this, but, in fact, the only real reason for keeping secrets is if they are let out into the open air, they would reflect badly on us or someone we know.  Therefore, we just keep our mouths shut and tell ourselves it’s a harmless bit of selective reporting.  Of course, at the end of the day, we also know that this isn’t strictly true.  In fact, no secret is harmless; if it were, there would be no need to keep it a secret then, would there?

Okay, now that we’ve established that, let’s move on to what I really want to write about: the United Nations.  Remember them?  They’re that international body of scoundrels who have spent the last couple of decades making the world safe from democracy.  I don’t have time to present the litany of their malfeasance here, but there are literally millions of graves all over the world to bear silent witness to their thoughts, words and deeds.  So what are they up to this week?  Nothing short of making a desperate grab for control of the Internet.   Alright!  Alright!  Alright!  Too much hyperbole, I’ll grant you, but hear me out.

Last week, the United Nations convened a secret committee of God only knowssecrets3 who to discuss the future of the Internet.   Apparently (and nobody knows for sure) these folks are considering a host of recommendations which might deal with everything from who pays for what to whether wdfyfe is dot com or dot ca.  Interestingly enough, this committee is holding its secret discussions in Dubai, the world’s most exclusive all-inclusive resort, which has a particular Internet record of its own.  Last month, they enacted a law which made it illegal for anyone to use, not only the Internet, but any electronic technology to criticize the current regime, or any of its officials, or to distribute information that did so.  So if you want to text your BFF that Sheik Somebody-Or-Other is an old fart, you better not do it in Dubai.  Personally, I’m stunned by the irony, and that’s not the half of it.

First of all, what’s the UN doing with its sticky little fingers on the Internet in the first place?  These are the folks who stood around with their hands in their pockets while 800,000 people were getting butchered in Rwanda.  They’re also the ones who hosted a Conference on Racism in Geneva in 2009 where the major speaker, President Ahmadinejad of Iran, said the Holocaust was an “ambiguous and dubious question” and called Israel a “totally racist” country.  (A little bit of the pot calling the kettle black, don’t you think?)  In fact, it got so bad, even the host nation, Switzerland, walked out.  This is the same United Nations which routinely acts as a rubber stamp for some of the most repressive regimes on the planet while simultaneously accusing some of the most progressive ones of racism, sexism, intolerance and anything else they can think up on the spur of the moment.  Trusting this bunch of clowns with anything more than wasting money and pissing people off is like giving an eight-year-old an unlimited credit card and the vote.  Think about it: when Iran, Malawi and Zimbabwe are all members of the Commission on the Status of Women, can you imagine who they’d pick to run Facebook and YouTube?

However, I can’t really say; nor can anyone else outside the United Nations upper echelon.  Why?  Because the entire conference is so super secret we peons are not allowed to know.  And why is that?  Your guess is as good as mine.  But this is what we do know.  A bunch of has-been diplomats, with a track record that would get any thoroughbred sent to the glue factory, are sitting around one of the most expensive and least democratic places on the planet.  They are deciding the fate of the cheapest, most far-reaching and completely democratic institutions in human history.  And they’re doing it because? … Nobody knows why.

secrets4Call me paranoid, but when a bunch of people I never voted for, don’t know and, most importantly, don’t know anything about, may very well be deciding what I can download, upload, look at or comment on across the future of my Internet connection, I get a little worried.  Especially when the best explanation they’ve given so far is “Don’t worry.”

And beyond all that, they’re conducting this shady business under a Maxwell Smart Cone of Silence.  It all kinda sounds like the plot from Get Smart doesn’t it?  The problem is, with the United Nations playing the incompetently evil organization trying to take over the world, we’re going to need more than Agent 86 to thwart them.  ‘Cause even Max would tell you, “This kind of secrecy is never benign.”

Paris: The Internet

Last week, I discovered a place where the Internet wasn’t alive.  It still existed, though.  After all, I was just outside Paris, not roaming the orangutan valleys of Borneo.  However, when I looked around, I found the www dot world didn’t breathe, pulse or walk on two legs.  It was just a machine.  It was convenient and smart and autocorrected my spelling, but like the ancient rotisserie toaster in my breakfast-included hotel, it didn’t change my life.  It just did as it was told.   That’s not strictly true.  I never figured out WiFi, for example, but that wasn’t the machine’s fault.  I don’t speak technologese in any language.  Regardless, it surprised me that within church bell distance of one of the most connected capitals on the planet, young people had unmasked the omnipotent Internet for what it is – a tool.

I love the internet.  It’s the greatest thing to happen to humanity since Gutenberg decided that the big money was in Bibles.  And like Gutenberg, the Internet has gone from changing history to shaping it — in just a couple of decades.  Of course, most of the big-gun commentators point out that this is because we’re all connected blah, blah, blah.  While that’s true, it’s not the only reason.  In fact, a lot of this new-found connectivity has simply trivialized much of our communication.  Texting, by its very nature, is not serious.  Don’t believe me?  Try double-thumbing your way through a complicated conversation sometime.  It can’t be done!  Personally, I prefer Graham Bell’s 19th century technology when I want to argue a point, if for no other reason than there are no passive aggressive LOLs or LMAOs to get in my way.  Of course, as in poker, if you’re going to be serious, you need to see the other person’s eyes.

That’s what the French kids were doing in a couple of cafes just outside Paris.  The national election was over and they were talking politics the way their grandparents did (just short of the other fellow’s nose) but with an extra kick.  Every once in a while an animated face would drop back and, with a few finger strokes, reach into cyberspace and haul out a fact.  The Smart Phones then became part of the argument presented like evidence in a court of law.  “Hollande said this.  Look!  It’s right here!”

This is what the Internet really is: a democracy of information.  It gives each of us the same opportunity to be just as smart as the rest of us — or the best of us.  We are no longer ignorant savages.  We have the world’s mightiest tool at our disposal: knowledge.  It doesn’t matter whether we want to know how to tie a Windsor knot or build a flying buttress, the Internet can show us how.  Those French students were going through encyclopedias of information at warp speed so they could wade back into the discussion like political fencers armed with sharpened epees.  They were using the Internet for its primary purpose: a vast depository of the world’s knowledge – everything from Herodotus to Sam Huntington — delivered to the palms of their hands by a digital Prometheus.

But remember: Prometheus was punished for giving gifts to humans and fire unleashed can be destructive.  For the most part, the Internet has been hijacked by social media — Facebook friends “Liking” everything under the sun and telling each other what they had for breakfast.  Serious debate has been overshadowed by Angry Birds™ (a great game, I might add.)  However, for a couple of days, I saw what the Internet was supposed to be: a really, really smart intuitive machine.  Like a paintbrush or a chisel, capable of greatness in the right hand and practically useless without a hand to guide it.