Today’s Words:
unruly
saddled
suspended
acronymic
feverish
onomatopoeic
inscription

There’s this Star Trek episode (no, years of mocking have not expunged that phrase from my narrative repertoire) where there is a running joke about Cap’n Picard’s saddle. It goes “every serious rider has his own saddle”. That doesn’t sound so funny, but imagine telling that to Worf in a slightly condescending what-you-didn’t-know-that-already? way and then smirking about it with Geordi. Wouldn’t that be a hoot? Heee, yes, it would!

I really wish I could install a feature on my brain like Google’s “do you mean ____?” suggestions. Imagine if you went to say something like “You never listen to me!” and a little dialog box popped up and said “Did you mean ‘I am feeling upset and would really like this point to be heard, would you tell me what you heard me say?’” Of course, you might get in trouble if you started relying on it and suspended your own, let’s call it, judgment. You’d yell out to a client “What, are you kidding? You want me to do WHAT??” and it wouldn’t know to guess that what you really meant was “I am not sure that’s the best way to accomplish what you want. Could I suggest an alternative?”. Then you’d be in trouble. You’d be saddled with an angry client, and they probably wouldn’t take “My Google implant isn’t working” as a reasonable excuse.

So I suppose it’s better not to outsource my attempts at diplomacy, such as they are.

I really can’t wait until the day I can get some implants. Forget Google Maps and Google Reader and Google Calendar. I want Google Brain. I want Google Eyes. If it makes life easier let’s go. Of course, I wouldn’t want incompatible drivers sorting themselves out in my head. Hmm.

Ooh, the Google Implant could also translate the alphabet soup of your acronymic friends. It could save notes in realtime, and record everything you’ve ever done. It could remind you how to spell onomatopoeia and describe the differences between alliteration and whatever is closest to that, see this is why I need a Google Implant. 

You’d never lose anything again. Every thought you think would be permanently inscribed in bits and bytes. Well–there’s still the storage space issue. But they’ll solve that. Right after they solve the unlimited power issue.

Look at me, all ready to hand my brain over to the man. You know what? I don’t care. I figure it kind of belongs to the man anyway. I’m fairly apathetic about it. The surveillance is so pervasive, and wrong, and random, and incorrect, that I figure that getting arrested is kind of like getting hit by a car. Not something I can entirely prevent. I can look both ways and not break any laws, but if some dumbass decides to violate my rights as a citizen, I may not be able to stop it. Is that cynical? I guess I’ve watched too many documentaries on our justice system to really believe in it being at all about justice. I just hope it doesn’t happen to me. Like cancer. Of course I have pretty good odds being a white middle-class woman. I’m not really worried about it. But not because I don’t in fact do anything very illegal, but because I’m not in the profile of the kinds of people who get arrested for no reason. And I know there are a lot of people who are just as innocent who end up in jail, or getting crazy irrational sentences, or detained by “National Security” without a trial. I think we live in much more of a police state than people want to admit. I’m just not upset because I don’t really expect it to be much different, given where we are at. Does that make me complacent? I think it will evolve on its own. The way society’s evolve, slowly, like a stumbling behemoth, lurching toward the light. I’m not sure feverishly angry people ever really did change anything. There, I said it. I’m not an activist. (I know, activism isn’t just about being angry…please don’t flame me.)