Chapter 2 Facade
Asinine Ancestors
A hundred and forty years earlier, with the advent of the computer age kicking into full force in the 1990’s, a multitude of independent entrepreneurs, using a world-wide data system, began the slow, steady process of tricking individuals into giving over valuable personal information with the lure of free access to information.
No one suspected anything sinister at first from this marvelous technology. This web of deceit had started innocently enough, merely providing anyone connected to it immediate access to electronic information that had previously been only available in physical form, with a time delay, and at a cost to obtain it.
Not only was access to the World Wide Web data fast, but it was generally free, or at least advertised as such. “Any topic, any time, not a dime,” was one Internet provider’s marketing motto. Hmmm, why that didn’t tip people off as something too good to be true is simply a mystery. The general public clamored to connect.
Sure, radio and television had been around for most of a century by then and could quickly share information in a limited sense, but never at the speed and with the self-directed raw unedited power that was possible with the Internet age.
Initially, the hardware and software companies made a killing providing the tools required for access to this monster. Like any new technology, these access machines, called Personal Computers (PCs), were very expensive. Early home PCs cost as much a modest style newer model used car.
But in time, just like the old phonographs, tube style televisions, video cassette recorders, camcorders, and compact disc players, the machines needed to access the Internet advanced in design, while dropping in price to the point that if someone could afford a phone or similar mobile device, they were hooked up.
With everyone “connected” it wasn’t long before the hardware and software companies weren’t the only ones making a fortune from this technology. Advertisers and pushers of online music, books, and video came first. Then, people selling their own stuff over the Internet became popular. And in no time, online stores selling everything and anything quickly followed.
In the typical “fast food” mentality, people got used to being able to have everything without delay. Whether it was instant communication or receiving delivery of a purchased item in the next day or two, our forefathers became hooked on getting things without having to wait. Patience became in short supply. It was instant gratification for a stuff-hungry generation.
And buy stuff they did. The stores shifted to further and further away. At first, it seemed incomprehensible that it could ever be less expensive to buy a product over the Internet from a store a thousand miles away and have it delivered to your front door in two days, than to just go down the street to the local “big box” store and buy it. But somehow, “they” made it work, though it was never clear who “they” were.
And people all followed like pigs to slaughter because they wanted cheaper and faster. What they didn’t realize is that it was cheaper for them back in the early 2000’s, but those alive in the 2130’s were the ones paying.
Our ancestors quickly got hooked on the instant gratification. But they also started getting hooked on the technology itself—to the point of ridiculous, if not just outright stupid.
It hadn’t taken long for the Internet to be in vogue, the main attraction, information rich, with music galore, and unlimited books, videos, and pictures. It was the vehicle to learn about anything. But then it developed into something more: the opportunity for everyone to put themselves out there, uploading their talents for the world to find. Or to upload their crap.
For every cool thing there became at least ninety-nine real losers, a lot of junk, bad mouthing, insults, scammers, ramblings with agendas, and commenting kings of crap. People just wanted to be ugly. That’s okay to a point. Everyone is ugly at times.
But what wasn’t anticipated, and what in no time the Internet allowed, was the losers to hide behind fake identities. Names like compost13, evil666 and stardick99. And they took great pride in criticizing everything and everyone, and with the foulest language. Not that some criticisms are a bad thing. But these guys just didn’t have the balls to put their names on it, and you can bet that ninety-nine point nine percent were guys because most girls weren’t hateful jerks then, as they were by the 2130’s.
This kept up for many years, and by well into the 2030’s, mankind had degenerated to the point of hiding behind these silicon facades. Our ancestors had become so small in courage and a sense of personal realness that they were actually well hidden behind those freaking smart phones and mobile palm pads. Oh yeah, back then people could safely blast their putrid thoughts out to anyone without repercussion. That doesn’t fly today, but I’m getting ahead.
Our kin-folk hid behind their little palm pals. They played their little e-games in their cars, in stores, in schools, at work, at play—everywhere. So there they were, walking around all over the place with faces always buried in a three-inch screen. And their brains got buried with it. People spewed out ugliness from their little itsy bitsy keypads. In the “old days” before the electronic age, as it is today, you would have your face bashed in for insulting others that way.
Here’s the thing that those numb, thumb-pilots never quite got, though. They thought their identities were hidden. They thought that their clever pen names like ihavnobolz2 were cleverly disguising their real names. But they weren’t. What morons our forefathers were!
People back then never quite grasped that everything they did online, everything they texted, every rude comment they made, and even everywhere they physically went was being recorded and saved for later. Years later. Decades later.
It all eventually became traceable to their real names and addresses and other personal information. Powerful Internet algorithms created an Internet database about each of them, at first in fragmented forms and later compiled more coherently. People’s current and future employers and many others had easy access to all their deeds online – forever.
After several decades of personal turmoil, humiliation, and financial repercussions from being idiots online, people did start to wise up. They had said and done too many stupid things. For many, being cute stopped being fun when it started costing money, especially in “missed” job opportunities and squandered promotions. For others it impacted educational prospects. For plenty of them, a quality place to live. And for countless others it followed them into their old age, affecting what quality of insurance, health care, and housing they could get.
So eventually people did learn to refrain from being anonymous jerks. They started putting their names on their Internet stuff. They started having some decency. But did it really matter by then? Not really. You could put on a new façade, but the old one was still out there too. The original databases never went away. They just evolved into the SIN Record.
The most curious part of this story is how exactly all the databases were able to get populated, exponentially, with personal data. It was simple. Our numbskull ancestors populated it willingly in a variety of cleverly designed ways that they embraced like fools. Understand: they did this even though it was not required. Dumb asses!
First, it started with an indoctrination to begin to prefer electronic over paper. From phone books, to maps, to newspapers and books, our great, great, great grandparents began to favor the speed and portability of electronic information over printed material. They loved how it de-cluttered their spaces at home and the office.
Second, there came a real beauty that just about made the art of hand written letters obsolete--free email accounts. No longer did people have to wait three days for their letters to be hand delivered to their intended recipient or buy postage stamps! Everyone below the age of, well, old geezer, jumped on this bandwagon. And ever since the very first email accounts, all electronic letters and messages had been saved in servers, regardless of whether people ever de
leted the emails, or their accounts, or themselves from this earth.
Third, in order to encourage people to blab to an even larger audience and have their ramblings out there forever for anyone to access, free blog sites were invented for their big egos, not to mention the advertisers’ benefit when ads were piggybacked onto the webpages. Similarly, other free websites were also created to help the previous schmuck generations to upload personal pictures, music, and video to further stroke their growing egos.
Fourth, if it weren’t enough to put personal stuff out there for people to find, social networks were created so that they could badger all their friends and work associates with all the same drivel. It was easy to get people to sign up. Since people were preoccupied with everything electronic, their real groups of friends were diminishing. The social networks made them feel like they had lots of friends.
And fifth, since desk computers rapidly got replaced with laptops, tablets, and smaller and smaller mobile devices, another huge advance was made for convenience: storage in the “clouds.” How asinine was this! The inventor of the concept was brilliant. No longer did people need to worry about having the hassle of storing pictures, video, music, and other documents on any of their many mobile devices. Instead, it was “safely” stored out there online ready to retrieve at a moment’s notice from anywhere.
The public loved it so much that they got rid of all their paper files through senseless scanning and uploads to the clouds. Thus, having turned over the privilege of storing their own personal data, and passing it to someone else’s ultimate control, the last nail in freedom’s coffin was pounded in place.
Let me repeat this again: they did all this even though it was not required. Dumb asses!
A social revolution had started as a result of the five dip-shitted steps of our relatives. Over the span of a few short decades, beginning around the infamous year of no return, 2000, everyone became able and willing to leave a record of their life. They uploaded their feelings, experiences, hopes, dreams, achievements, and every other kind of personal data through a multitude of electronic media creations such as emails, texts, blogs, short stories, pictures, music, audio and video, self-published books, scanned files, and cloud storage. This was a huge deal.
A social phenomenon of this magnitude, and with such deep implications, had never been possible before at any time in the history of mankind. Our fathers of old had suddenly found themselves the holders of a technological power that allowed them to leave a permanent mark like a dog with radioactive piss.
Before the Internet, unless people did something notable that, virtuous or depraved, would get them into the history books, only the privileged or unlucky few could leave their mark. And even then, the physical media upon which those marks existed had in most cases deteriorated to nothing. Most all of early humanity’s records and writings had vanished. To a large degree there was no remembrance of men of old and, for those remembered, certainly little factual detail known.
The ordinary average guy never got squat for notoriety until the Internet came along, prancing into everyone’s houses in pink leotards for our perverted great grandparents to embrace. Their egos and desire to feel important ruined everything.
The Internet had the potential to allow anything to go viral and be read, watched or listened to by millions of people instantly. All of a sudden, anyone could have prompt fame and fortune. And many did. The constant lure of instant fame and fortune kept people playing the Internet like some big lotto. It was easy to play it. The cost of the lotto ticket was mere information, personal information.
The lotto’s giant information cow was eventually taken over by government entities, and it evolved into the SIN Record, the ultimate social control over everything people did to buy, sell, eat, play, work, travel, and just be human.
Not long after the SIN Record was established, people began to be held accountable for their past and present behaviors, beliefs, and lifestyles, and then rewarded or punished according to how they meshed with the tenets of the State. No longer was anyone able to deny what they believed, what they’d done or where they’d gone.
This was the situation by the late 2130’s. Everyone was pigeonholed into government established social classes. What they could eat, what they could purchase, where they could live, and where they could go were all determined by their SIN Score, which set their social class standing.
Algorithms constantly riffled through people’s SIN Record and calculated a SIN Score based on economic, social, religious, and criminal factors past and present. It was extremely difficult or costly to change a SIN Score on purpose.
If people didn’t like who they were and wanted to change their social position, too bad! They were persecuted for their old selves, new selves, and for all of their previous and current relatives’ facades too. The perceived sins of the fathers were being forced to be paid by the children in whatever ways facilitated government objectives.
Sinead and Miranda looked questioningly at each other and already knew each other’s answer. Sinead turned to loan officer Matole Lavy and said, “Yes, of course we’re interested in the Hardship Program. Thank you so much for helping us, Mr. Lavy.” They happily signed up for forty years of extortion by the United Central Bank. And they were damn fortunate to have that option.
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