Tag Archives: identity

We Now Live in an Era of Institutionally Required Paranoia–And there’s no solution

Business, News, Technology, , , , , , ,
They found me, even though I live next door to the Unabomber
They found me, even though I live next door to the Unabomber

It was recently announced that hackers broke into three of the largest data brokers out there and stole millions of social security numbers, plus all sorts of other identification characteristics on people they track. Basically, what this means is that companies that track your information without your permission, or even without your knowledge, have had that information stolen from them, so all of your information is now in the hands of some very bad people who will use it to steal from you, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. So, have a nice day and please buy more products from random companies.

In case you were unaware of it, this sort of thing is happening more and more often. Even if you choose to remain completely off line and never even do anything that can cause anyone to try to steal from you, there are companies out there making it so that you’re already online and everything of yours online is pretty much open to someone breaking into it, EVEN IF IT’S NOT YOU THEY BREAK INTO. That’s the real scary thing because the way our capitalistic system works means that companies we’ve never done business with can now use your information, collect your information, trade with each other based on your information and pretty much put you into the poor farm by using your information.

A couple of months back, someone used my bank credit card to buy train tickets in France. I have no idea how they got a hold of my information, but I can tell you that when I dealt with my bank, I was very much put on the defensive, almost as if something I had done caused this sort of thing to happen. There was never any statement along the lines of “you know, maybe it was our fault.” Shortly after this, it was leaked that this bank suffered a huge data loss that resulted in accounts being compromised. Not once was a single comment made about that, although when it looked like maybe the mistake was on my part, the conversation was sure a lot different.

And that’s kind of the future that we have to look forward to. Credit monitoring companies maintain databases of massive volumes of information on each and every one of us. But if they lose some of that information, they MIGHT (usually if the government steps in and shames them) inform you. And they just might offer a free credit report to see how screwed you really are. If you were screwed because of their action, expect years of having to explain yourself as no one will ever believe you didn’t actually try to buy 10,000 units of widgets from St. Petersburg in the middle of the night while using your credit card to buy a bail bond for some criminal in Florida.

The real issue here is that so much information is available about people and no one seems to care that we’ve become products rather than the owners of this information. Just think about Facebook and LInkedIn. Both “services” are actually data brokers who believe they actually own your information and that your contribution is that you’re allowed to organize it for them so it’s easier to access. If you quit Facebook, your information stays there pretty much forever, no matter how much they say it won’t be. And if you never joined Facebook, your information somehow made it there any way, and they’re just basically waiting for you to acknowledge you’re who you are so they can start tracking you better and send you notices of things you should buy.

We’ve all become products who think we’re actually in control of ourselves, and that’s the real tragic thing. We haven’t been the owners of our own identities for a very long time now, and even now people don’t recognize that. Or when they do, they just sort of shrug and figure it’s too much of a hassle to bother with anyway. But when their identities are stolen, it’s usually too late, so we all play a reverse lottery game here in which we hope that nothing bad ever happens to us while we cast discerning eyes at thoese who do get their identities stolen. We’re good until it happens to us.

And then, like I said, it’s generally too late. But that’s okay. We have much more important things to pay attention to. Who has time for this sort of thing?

Creating Mythology

Religion, Writing, , , , , ,

One of my all-time passions has been the study of mythology. From the ideas of Joseph Campbell to the attempts of anthropologists to link ancient religion with ancient daily life, I’ve always been fascinated by the manifestations that people put into the study of symbolic metaphor and tying one’s behaviors to the perceptions of one’s surrounding universe. In all of that study, one of the things that has always intrigued me is the concept of unlocking secrets and discovering mysteries buried within ambiguities.

One of the struggles I had with writing one of my most recent novels, The Ameriad, was how to generate mythology in every day concepts that may not have existed, but could so easily mirror the past beliefs of other civilizations. While The Ameriad was developed with a sense of humor involved, it was still fascinating to generate an historical mythology that dealt with gods leading the first Americans to our rocky shores.

So why am I talking about mythology now? Well, it turns out that my latest writing project involves another aspect of mythological thinking that I haven’t had a chance to play around with, and that’s the idea of following up mysteries within ambiguities. In other words, I want to create a sense of mythology within the general world, yet touch on those mysteries with a sense of something bigger than the main characters themselves, something so strong and vivid that it literally takes a life of its own, hinting that it may actually exist outside of the book of fiction itself. To do this, I’m starting to explore the nuances of language, in how people talk to each other and often leave certain things out, while dropping hints of something slightly below the surface. To do this, I’m exploring several organizations that existed on the periphery of fringe communities in the 1990s that were often subjects that people talked around in ways that indicated some people knew a little more than they were revealing. An example is a religious organization that existed in the late 1980s that rose up to international prestige in select groups, yet was often difficult to contact no matter how hard you tried. There was a sense of guarded indifference to outsiders, so those trying to find out more information were often led down blind corridors and only the very devout were ever capable of getting close enough to discover more information.

That is the sort of thing I’m exploring with the topic I’m dealing with. Throughout history, there have always been fringe elements existing on the periphery of our society, and whenever people attempted to make contact, they were often frowned upon, either through strict membership rules or attempts to keep out the prying eyes of government authorities.

I’ll keep you informed. Or maybe I won’t.