Tag: Big Brother

AI? OH MY!

As Ray Parker so brilliantly stated in the Ghostbusters song, and I concur, “I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts,” AI however, now that’s a different load of bwana.

Okay so AI is supposed to be the end all be all of intelligence. It will cure all diseases, create a high-tech world and even figure out a way to make Prince Harry stop whining about how tough a life it is to be born the Prince of England.

Still, I have nightmares and no, not about monsters or a werewolf that looks like Michael Landon. Mine involve Google.

And what’s so scary about Google you ask?

It’s watching us. It’s Big Brother come to life. It’s George Orwell’s worst nightmare, and now it’s ours.

In one dream I was hiding inside my house while a little Google robot with humongous eyes was floating outside my window peering inside. I was crawling on the floor to escape detection as it hovered outside my window. I screamed and ducked as it continued to float like a headless object scrutinizing me like a Secret Service agent watches for snipers.

Grow up you say. It was only a silly dream. But was it really?

In case you’re wondering what brought on this sudden burst of irrational Googlenoia, it started with Siri.

Siri, that is only supposed to talk when spoken to has begun taking it upon herself to start conversations for no apparent reason or prompting on my part. Yet when I ask her a direct question she acts as though I’m speaking in a foreign language.

“Siri, how do I get to 335 Maple Drive?”

“Here are the directions for 772 Elm Street.”

“No, Siri, I said Maple Drive.”

“When did you say you want to arrive?”

I give up.

I first noticed this new chatty habit when I was baking one day and pulled a cake out of the oven. “Perfect,” I said to no one in particular.

From the living room I heard a voice on my iphone say, “thank you for saying that, but I’m not perfect.”

Not only does she speak to me she contradicts me! Is she so neurotic she can’t take a compliment?

“No, I’m not perfect!!”

What’s next, a tirade against her motherboard for a dysfunctional childhood?

Annoying? Yes, but why scary?

Because she is listening all the time!

The FBI recommends you put tape over your computer camera screen opening because someone could be watching you.

Tough luck for them, because when I’m on the computer I’m usually in my robe and in glasses looking like the wrath of God.

If they are expecting to see Sydney Sweeny good luck Mr. Snoopynose, not here, not ever.

Today’s generation is acclimated to a lack of privacy. They grew up with Iphones, computers and robots.

I wasn’t. My robot model was Hal in 2001 A Space Odyssy and that wasn’t a good thing. HAL was hardly a pillar of virtue. In fact, HAL scared me off robots forever.

And although the Jetsons painted a rosy future of a robot named Rosie to clean up after us, the world never delivered. And that round thing that moves around your house, bumping into walls and picking up a teaspoon of dust, is no Beep Beep Rosie.

Oh sure, Isaac Asimov would have us believe that the three laws of robots precluded them from harming man, but hello! STUFF HAPPENS. Perhaps robots can evolve too. And maybe after spending time with the human race, they decide they are too annoying to condone.

I know so many people who have literally extracted their brain and inserted it directly into their Alexa. I asked a friend a question the other day and he immediately called out, “Alexa what was my mother’s name?”

I walk around like Frankenstein’s monster yelling “it’s alive!”

The feeling someone is listening to what I say, or always hovering above me terrifies me. It’s offensive and frightening and creeps me out. Can you say, robotic paranoia?

Now I have to worry that drones will be dropping from the sky unto my head. Chicken Little wasn’t bad enough with all that sky falling insanity? Who knew he was onto something?

Of course, I’m not plotting to rob the Tower of London or steal a French fry off a friend’s plate, (well I would ask first). It’s just that it makes me feel violated and uncomfortable. And looking upward all the time.

I can’t change overnight just because the new world is so accepting of Big Brother’s presence.

From what I can remember he wasn’t a good thing, right?

So, why is it now okay to spy on people. To collect all their information, personal and otherwise and make it public?

Now AI will make it even easier for hackers to steal my information, use my info and steal my life. If AI is so great why doesn’t it teach victims of these crimes how to outsmart the criminals?

Perhaps we are too accepting. We should rail against this new world where our lives are open for business 24/7. Where there is no respect for our private space.

Alas, I fear it’s already too late. My computer just winked at me and Siri stuck out her tongue. My credit card company just texted to ask if I just bought six Chanel bags in a mall in Dubai. No, I replied, I’m in my pjs on my couch writing about all this craziness at the moment.

Oh well, I suppose I’ll have to accept that next an army of robots will descend upon mankind, capture us and make us their slaves.

I think they already have and no one knows yet. Maybe that explains why most world leaders are speaking in crazy tongues now.

Well, I won’t buckle under and put on lipstick to sit at my computer. So just take your chances Mr. Spyware hidden in that camera.

Okay, so I ain’t afraid of no ghosts, but robots and AI, well that’s a whole other thing.

I Actually Bought Matches Today

I actually bought a box of matches today on Amazon. I don’t ever remember buying matches before.

My entire life I always had tons of matchbooks lying around and never thought twice about lighting candles, burning sage, setting my hair on fire, or whatever.

Now although many prefer using candles lit with batteries, I still find myself needing matches.

So, I went where I always go, to Amazon and ordered matches. Surprisingly they ran the gamut of prices, from twenty-seven dollars to $2.98. Guess which I bought?

Talk about burning through money! Twenty-seven dollars for a match? Unless they burn solid gold, I’m going with the cheaper model.

Okay so you’re wondering why I am wasting time opining about matches, but stay with me here.

Matches are a symbol of the loss of what I call the freebee.

Yes, there was a time in America when everywhere you went there was stuff lying around to take home.  The goal was you’d use it all in advertising their product, store or whatnot.

Banks gave out pens, until I’m not quite sure when they started nailing them down to the counter.

Every restaurant had bowls of matches next to the mints when you left.

Calendars were a biggie. They reminded you of who furnished them for a solid year.

All sorts of premiums were given away gladly to ensure your continued business. Even candies were wrapped in a business’s name.

So why has this all changed and I now have to buy matches on Amazon?

If you’re thinking, wow she is cheap, complaining about some two-dollar matches.

Well, that’s not the point, although it did bug me a little.

Like old people who buy Sweet ‘n’ Low in a grocery store. We all know they don’t. But hey I do, so there. Not so cheap huh?

What is getting to me is wondering if they gave up all this freebee stuff how are they planning to get our attention now? Personally, I don’t like where this is headed.

We’ve already witnessed why matches are no longer necessary to grab your attention every day.

Computers and AI. That’s right the big C and little AI are now in charge of all the brainwashing.

If I sound paranoid it’s because I am.

It’s like a little invisible robot is following me around the Internet.

She just checked out a blouse at Macy’s, jump on it. Suddenly I’m receiving not only a picture of that same blouse on every webpage I enter, but more as well.

At least the restaurants with their free matches never followed me home and harassed me every second to come back and eat there again.

It doesn’t matter what you check out on line someone is there to remind you to buy it, visit it or come back to the site.

It’s uncanny how fast they move. They even add products that may go along with what you checked out.

Like if you search for a dining room table, suddenly you’ll see ads on your Facebook page for the matching chairs.

It’s like your own secret shopper is stalking you across the Web.

Now I’m not saying I’m dumb enough to believe we have any privacy in our lives anymore.

Hello Big Brother I feel you!

But come on, even shopping? Is nothing sacred any longer? I mean a girl and her charge card is a special relationship and should be respected.

Why should Google care if I need a new blouse? Have these people nothing better to do?

I remember the days when it was fun to window shop. Stores closed earlier then and it was fun some evenings to simply walk around and check out the merch after dinner or a movie. You’d notice how they displayed the products to get your attention especially on the holidays when everything was decked out to entice you to buy, buy, buy!

Believe it or not actual people thought about what mannequins to use, where to place them and what fun accents would draw more attention to each window and product.

Now little bots crawl around the Internet checking what you notice and reporting it to the head Bot. I don’t remember voting for a head Bot.

If this sounds creepy, I agree.

No one ever followed us around from store to store as we admired how a window was decorated. Unless they were a stalker. But there seemed to be a whole lot less of those back in the day.

Now our stalkers are little cyber beings that track, report and let Big Brother know our desires, taste level and how much time we’re willing to waste on line each day.

Supposedly there is a way to stop them from tracking your whereabouts. I’m certain that is a ploy to lure you into an illusion of privacy and they just make their little robots more stealth.

Gotta go now. Amazon is at the door delivering my matches. Hey what’s this? My Facebook just popped up with an ad for a lighter? Actually, I should have thought of that myself. Sad when you realize the little bots have better shopping genes that you. How depressing for a woman.
Thinking about all of this I am remembering how exciting it was when our family bought its first television set. Who knew eventually it would be the TV watching us one day?

Why We Refuse to See The Unseen

thglasses

Why We Refuse to See The Unseen

I’ve never seen a UFO. I thought I heard one outside my window one night, but of course that’s pure conjecture. So no, I have no evidence they either exist or don’t exist. The truth is UFOs have given me a rather interesting perspective on life that I’ve embraced and believe has been greatly responsible for my points of view. Simply, I understand that it’s not so much what we see in life that colors our reality so much as what we won’t see.

The empty space that exists between what is seen and what is not can answer questions, inject wisdom and provide a vital perspective to the answers we seek.

How can a void be so filled with information you ask? Because it’s sometimes the lack of information that is most clear.

Although a simple analogy, most people will tell you that at stressful times like funerals or serious moments in life, human nature may not notice so much who is there as whom is missing. I believe we’ve all felt this during our lives and heard others speak it as well.

So and so wasn’t at the funeral did you notice?

It’s not about being petty, it’s actually about new information that absence or empty space affords us.

We expect the people who show up, to well show up, so there is no surprise when they do. However when one doesn’t, that is new information. If we apply this simple logic to most things in life it becomes apparent. There may be much to see in the abyss.

As a reporter I often made it a habit to look for the non-existence in the room before what was before my eyes. Who might be absent from a crucial meeting? Who was seated far away from a former colleague or someone’s silence in lieu of speaking? I often learned a great deal from observing what wasn’t there.

I’ve come to the conclusion it’s what we refuse to observe that most effects our lives. The obvious cannot surprise or catch us off guard. The silent however is capable of the strangest and most deadly consequences.

Have we all been guilty at times of closing our eyes to what is unseen or our ears to the unspoken?

To be Cleopatra, Queen of Denial instead of facing the silence that literally screamed at us to notice while we covered or averted our eyes.

Are there UFOs, does China have ten more viruses at hand even more deadly and dangerous than COVID19, is Iran on the verge of nuclear power, has the day for robots to take our place already come and we refuse to see? No, I’m not claiming there are UFOs, they are merely a good example of the schism between those who have witnessed them and those who say absolutely not. Perhaps the expression, “I couldn’t believe my own eyes,” may be relevant.

The scariest part of recent events is that in our relationship with China we avoided the space that held the truth. What else are we refusing to see that may come in the night and catch us off guard? When did we ignore the potential of an oppressive regime that had committed atrocities against its own people? The warnings of so many experts, or were we simply no more than a foolish woman who is blinded by a man’s good looks and wealth and ignores his five previous marriages?

These are global examples, but the truth is there is an unseen every day in our lives.

Google is now running the world in the void between sight lines. They are far more dangerous than Big Brother because even Orwell who foresaw the power didn’t see its true extent.

Computers have relegated every area of our lives into a giant open book of data they now possess and use to control us. How we buy, shop, travel, live, eat, work and even love. Yet we shake it off and say “no big deal.”

Artificial intelligence is already baked into the cake we consume each day and yet we don’t see.

Will we awaken one morning as we did to a pandemic and find we have been taken over by robots? Or a terrorist nation with a bomb they’ve handed to one of their proxies to explode in Times Square, or perhaps even aliens among us unseen and close to being unmasked? Is the element of surprise not really a surprise at all?

What might next catch us off guard because we’ve refused to notice, to read between the lines, to avoid those parts of reality we’d rather not observe?

Hamlet said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Shakespeare acknowledged the determination of human beings to refuse to test reality, to look away from the unseen even when it stares us in the face.

“There is no there there” is probably the most misleading statement in human existence, for if we look into the void we will see there is always a there there. What we won’t see will always ultimately be revealed, so the question we must ask is; will we be prepared when it is?

 

 

I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts, Now Robots…

mexicorn chowder

I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts! Now Robots…

 

Last night I had a nightmare. No not about monsters or a werewolf that looked remarkably like Michael Landon. It wasn’t even about my last blind date, strange as that may seem.

It was about Google.

And what’s so scary about Google you ask.

It’s watching us. It’s Big Brother come to life. It’s George Orwell’s worst nightmare and now it’s ours.

In my dream I was hiding inside my house while a little Google robot that was mainly eyes was floating outside my windows peering inside. I was crawling on the floor to escape detection but it hovered outside my windows and every time I looked up it was there. I would scream and duck and it continued to float like a headless object outside watching me like a secret service agent watches the crowds.

Grow up you say. It was only a silly dream. But was it really?

In case you’re wondering what brought on this sudden burst of irrational Googlenoia, it started with Siri.

Oh sure innocent enough except that my Siri, which is only supposed to talk when spoken to…I have an older Iphone…has begun taking it upon herself to start a conversation for no apparent reason or prompting on my part. Yet when I ask her a question directly she acts as though I’m speaking a language she’s never even heard of?

“Siri how do I get to 335 Maple Drive?”

“Here are the directions for 772 Elm Street.”

I first noticed her new chatty habit when I was baking one day and pulled a cake out of the oven. “Perfect,” I said to no one in particular.

From the living room I heard a voice say, “thank you for saying that, but I’m not perfect.”

Not only does she speak to me she contradicts me! Is she so neurotic she can’t take a compliment?

“No, I’m not perfect!!”

What’s next, a tirade against her motherboard for her dysfunctional childhood?

Siri’s problems aside I thought it a fluke of nature and found it rather funny. So much so I related the incident to my daughter at her home a few weeks later.

Siri was charging on the kitchen counter and I was telling my daughter about the incident while she looked at me like a child who is thinking she should start looking for a good nursing home for her mother when suddenly Siri decided to join the conversation.

My daughter looked over and said. Oh my gosh, that is so annoying.

Well yes, but at least Siri’s response will keep me on the streets and out of a nursing home a little longer.

“See,” I said. “It’s true she talks to me all the time now.”

My daughter just shook her head in that only-to-my-mother-does-this-happen way she has and I just went back to playing with my grandsons.

Who Siri went on to talk to next I have no idea, nor do I care.

Now it has become a regular thing. When the TV is on Siri will comment on something spoken.

I just agree and move on.

Shortly thereafter my daughter bought one of those Google robots for the home and that lasted less than a week before it went bye bye.

Annoying? Yes, but then why scary?

Because they are listening all the time!

The FBI recommends you put tape over your computer camera screen opening because someone could be watching you.

Well that’s their bad luck because when I’m on the computer I’m usually in my robe and glasses and looking like the wrath of God.

If they are expecting to see Cindy Crawford good luck Mr. Snoopy, not here, not today.

Today’s generation is acclimated to a lack of privacy. They grow up with Iphones, computers and robots in their homes.

I wasn’t. My robot model was Hal in 2001 and that’s not a good thing.

And although the Jetsons painted a rosy future of a robot named Rosy to clean up after us, the world never delivered.

Oh sure Isaac Asimov would have us believe that the three laws of robots precluded them from harming man, but hello! STUFF HAPPENS.

The feeling someone is listening to what I say, hovering above me—welcome to the world of drones on top of everything else literally—and watching what I do, to me is offensive and frightening.

Now I have to worry that drones will be falling from the sky unto my head. Where’s Chicken Little when you need him?

Of course it’s not that I’m plotting to rob the Tower of London or sneak into the subway, it’s that it makes me feel violated and uncomfortable. It’s just plain creepy.

I can’t change overnight just because the new world is so accepting of Big Brother’s presence.

From what I can remember he wasn’t a good thing, right?

So, why is it now so okay to spy on people and collect all my information, personal and otherwise and make it public?

It isn’t, and that’s the point.

Perhaps we are too accepting now. We should rail against this new world where our lives are open for business 24/7 and there is no respect for our private space.

I fear it’s too late now. My computer just winked at me and Siri stuck out her tongue. I suppose I’ll have to accept that next an army of robots will descend upon us, capture us all and make us their slaves.

I think they already have and no one knows yet.

Well I don’t care, I’m not putting on lipstick to sit on my computer so take your chances.

Okay so I ain’t afraid of no ghosts, but robots well that’s a whole other thing.

 

Mexi-Corn Chowder

 

2 cups of chicken bullion

2 cups cream

2 ears of corn roasted

½ cup red peppers

½ cup yellow peppers

½ cup red peppers

¼ cup green chilies

1 small onion chopped

¼ cup chopped jalapeno peppers without the seeds

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon cilantro

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon hot pepper flakes if you desire more heat.

 

 

Rub about two large ears of corn with butter and a sprinkle of salt. Remove kernels from the cob and set aside.

Sauté onion in butter and when translucent add chopped peppers, chilies, corn and seasonings. When softened add soup and sauté for another ten minutes. Using a hand blender blend together about half the soup. This will thicken it and when done add cream. Stir and simmer for another five minutes on low heat.

Serve with shredded cheese or popcorn on top.