#1182 Scary Tech

There are things that scare me about modern technology. Like when you open up an email and a warning at the top says, “Some pictures have been blocked to protect your privacy. Click here to load pictures.”
I get this even when I get one of those “What’s New with Comcast” updates. Isn’t it a little unsettling that opening up a picture could make it easier for an outside person to identify your computer? What is it in the code that allows that kind of thing? When they create the picture are they putting in a cookie, which then deposits itself in your computer like an ingested roundworm?
Pictures and cookies are supposed to be innocuous and trouble-free things. Mild amusement. Pleasant pastimes. Simple joys. Not nefarious dark threats to your welfare. Isolate him! Interrogate him! Destroy his computer memory! Give him a cookie!
I don’t know how they do it. I suppose that’s why it scares me all the more. Ignorance can be scary. We are a nation with all kinds of clever computer destroyers and technically ignorant people like me.
Some even more ignorant. I saw a product the other day, which was obviously a generic iPod. The label on the product said it was a “Digital MP3 Player”. I’m no tech-whiz, but aren’t all MP3 players Digital? Is their an analog MP3?
Yeah, dude, you just gotta listen to my MP3 8-Track. It’s almost as good as the warm scratchy sound from my MP3 vinyl LP.
Or, Hey check out my visual TV!
Speaking of technologically scary, here’s something even more so. I was driving by an old radio station yesterday. It’s not “on the air,” but it still receives and transmits radio waves from and to other locations. The florescent light tubes on the outside of the station were glowing faintly.
I happen to know they were turned off.
But the radio waves swirling invisibly in and around the station are causing the molecules of gas in the florescent tubes to glow. I’m glad I never worked at that station. At least without my foil hat.
The consequences could have been ugly.
I think I’ll block that picture...from my mind.
America, ya gotta love it.