We are so over the winter, and we still have miles to go before we sleep. Those bills from the holidays just keep arriving in the mail; the mailman has to wear a special supportive back brace simply to hoist them out of the truck.
The football season is basically over; naturally none of your teams even made it to the first commercial for Metamucil. And your addictive television series ends with the death of your favorite character; the series doesn’t pick up again until sometime in the spring and who knows by then if you will even see it, since your cataracts are making everyone look like a version of former presidential candidate Ross Perot.
So yes, we are ready to move on. So, to keep our minds busy on these gray winter days, many people have turned to the field of technology and especially social media.
This is as dangerous as showing up at the motor vehicle office and waiting for your number to be called ahead of a guy in a Hell’s Angels jacket.
Lots of people are concerned about the parameters of this technology since they use social media to substitute for a real life and real friends.
What with all the Twitter, Facebook, eBay, and hot singles sites, it’s no wonder we don’t even know how to say hello to an actual living, breathing human. You may as well cut out pictures from People magazine and place them at the dinner table for company.
And with all its pitfalls, it’s only natural to be in a full-blown paranoia only seen in psych ward black-and-white films from the ‘50s.
Strangers hacking into what little mind you have left is a frightening thought. Fortunately not for you, but for them.
No one even remembers what the term privacy means anymore. In fact, I recently saw it as a word to be defined on “Wheel of Fortune.” Of course, not one contestant could guess any of the letters.
Anything that rings in your home will have been funneled from a Third World country; that includes the land phone, cellphone, computer, dishwasher and even your doorbell rings with some connection to the Mediterranean peninsula. They know your real dress size and the fact that you lied about your age at the DMV. It seems that social media has taken over any brain power left in a person’s skull. Between Twitter and Facebook time, users share the most intimate, outstanding, dramatic parts of their lives.
OK, mostly it’s about if they are going out to lunch that day. But it still counts. But all this stuff is amateur night compared to real technology, which no one on this planet has been able to bust through. And that is getting to talk to a real person at your local cable company.
Just being on hold is considered enough of an endurance test to qualify for the Olympics.
Now, I am not picking on the cable companies, but I have it on good authority that all the billions being spent on space exploration to Mars is because scientists now believe that is where the headquarters of all utility companies exist, including cable companies.
If the government was serious about security, they could just hire a cable company to be in charge of their intelligence. Believe me, no one would get through.
There would be no leaks, no Snowdens, no whistleblowers, only the voice telling you this call may be recorded. Yikes!
Cabin fever will pass. Restlessness will subside. And the sun will come out tomorrow.
As philosopher Albert Camus once said, “In the depths of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.” Fine for him, but say hello to your new best friend, from Amazon – Alexa!
