Is This Really Earth?

I feel bummed out today. I can think of three reasons, and one contains a movie spoiler, so don’t read if you like James Bond.

1. I started drinking coffee because I was sick, I got used to it, and today I didn’t drink any. Going off caffeine depresses your mood temporarily.

2. I am sad because of the way computers are taking over the world and turning us into a bot swarm made of tattooed meat. It makes me feel sad for the world, and it makes me feel cut off from my own species.

3. I found out James Bond died, for sure, in the latest movie. Somehow, that seems like the latest in a long series of Satan’s blows at masculinity and America. I realize James Bond is supposed to be a British agent, but be serious. He has always acted like an American, he has always used props England could never afford or produce, and he has always been on our side.

Films like the James Bond series are made pretty much exclusively by Americans, except for the Bond films themselves.

A number of years ago, I said computers would eventually learn things about us before we did, or before we wanted them to be known by others, even if they weren’t programmed to do it. I said people would find out they had things like cancer because their computers would start showing them ads for things sick people buy. It had to happen whether we told computers to do it or not, because life isn’t that complicated. One human being is much like another, and we react to experiences very similarly. If enough people Google chemotherapy drugs AND Hungry Man Dinners AND Air Supply CD’s AND orange socks, sooner or later computers will see the correlations, and they will start recommending things that make unsuspecting Internet users realize they’re sick.

Computers that aren’t necessarily intended to pry into our private business and draw disturbing conclusions about us will certainly do it, because they don’t know any better. They will detect correlations we haven’t figured out, before we do, and they will let us know about them.

Today I found out it had already happened.

The father of a young woman in Minnesota found out she was pregnant by looking at ads Target sent to his house. She was buying things women tend to buy when they’re with child, and Target started offering her other things that were clearly aimed at pregnant women. Her dad got angry and went to Target to talk to the manager. He thought Target was pushing an innocent virgin to get pregnant. Then she told him she was expecting.

If it has happened to one woman, and we know about it, the same type of thing has happened to millions of other people, and in all likelihood, the people who store and weaponize our personal information are usually the only ones who are aware it’s happening.

If there is a mercy in the story, it’s that Target’s computers were helped by a human being. Do computers still need help? I’m sure they need a lot less now.

The Target story came out in 2012. That was 9 years ago. Computers have gotten much sharper since then. I’m surprised we’re not already hearing knocks on our doors. Criminals probably tend to buy certain things, depending on their crimes of choice. Are the cops teaming up with nerds to create pre-crime bureaus?

Of course they are, now that I think about it. We’ve already seen them at work. In 2013, two murderers set off a bomb at the Boston Marathon, and the bomb was made from a pressure cooker. Not long afterward, the husband of then-blogger Michele Catalano got a visit from the authorities. He had searched for pressure cookers online. It turns out pressure cookers are also used to cook food.

The fuss over his search went away, but you have to wonder how many other people are on lists now. The pressure cooker incident drew negative attention to the government. Do you think that made them quit what they were doing, or do you think they just decided to keep it quiet? I’ll bet Edward Snowden knows.

I’m an attorney, so I know a little bit about evidence. If the authorities do something improper to get evidence, the evidence may be inadmissible, and in some cases, they may cause a public stench which is too big a price to pay for a conviction. It would make sense, then, for the authorities to avoid using such evidence in court. That being said, crooked law enforcement people could obtain evidence in objectionable ways, cover their tracks, and then dig up more evidence which can’t be shown to be tainted.

I guess I’m conflating two things. It bothers me that the Internet is developing deductive powers that seem godlike to human beings, and it also bothers me that we can’t prevent the government from using technology to make the Fourth Amendment even more of a fiction than it already is.

There is nothing we can do about any of this. It’s way too late. Technology is too decentralized and too tantalizing to control, and besides, man is just like a monkey. When you give a monkey a stick, it will always look for someone to hit with it.

You don’t have to shop online to end up in a database, by the way. Wal-Mart sends me emails when I shop in person, congratulating me on my newly purchased canned peas and elbow macaroni. I have no idea how they know it’s me. Credit card, I guess.

Both of the grocery stores I use regularly have loyalty programs, so they know what I buy, too. So does CVS.

Today I feel like there is no reason for me to be here. On Earth. I’m being absorbed nonconsensually into an electronically connected, increasingly trashy, authoritarian global family I want nothing to do with. My fellow Americans have gone completely insane, to the point where they try to get people fired for calling men, men. Evangelism is going almost nowhere. Free will is vanishing. It appears that economic disaster is going to hit us any minute now. On top of all this, every time I go anywhere outside my state, I have to wear a mask that does absolutely nothing except for making me very uncomfortable.

What are my wife and I still doing here?

Freedom, order, morality, and prosperity are unnatural. Throughout history, most people have been oppressed, lawless, corrupt, and poor. Like the Chinese. God alone has made a few nations havens where people behaved reasonably well. Now America has fired God.

Yesterday, I saw a fascinating video about real estate. A South African who lived in China said the real estate markets in places like Canada, Europe, and America were being propped up and ruined by the Chinese. He said the Chinese shelter their money in real estate, and many of them want to get out of China. Rich Chinese people show up in places like Vancouver and pay top dollar in cash, driving up home prices. Then they lie and say their income is very low, like under $15,000. China won’t help other governments verify their claims. They end up owning expensive homes in the West while contributing very little in taxes.

He said this is what happens when a low-trust country interacts with a high-trust country. I thought that was brilliant. He gave me labels for characteristics I have observed for a long time. People from corrupt places like China, Mexico, and India move to places like the US, where people are relatively honest, and they bring their dishonesty with them. They use our trust and honest against us. Over time, we become like them. It’s really something.

Christianity made America a decent place to live. In addition to all of our computer-related problems, I think we are becoming a low-trust country. If that’s true, most of the US will start looking a lot like Detroit. Every drugstore will have a bulletproof glass wall we have to shove our credit cards through. Going to Denny’s after 6 p.m. will be like sitting in the front row at a UFC match.

I’m digressing. I started out with technology, and now I’m talking about other things that are making us rot.

Trashy people are like another species. You can’t communicate with them even if you speak the same language. There is never cooperation. There is only detente. I love living in a county where people are good to each other. I don’t know what I’ll do if the disease of trashiness spreads here.

Why hasn’t anyone made a movie about the network of computers turning into near-gods? Of course, they have, but the movies I know about were not realistic. They took place far in the future. They generally featured scary computer systems put in place by malevolent traditional corporations run by white men in suits. They didn’t involve Amazon, Google, and Ebay. They didn’t show people wondering why Facebook knew things about them before they did.

I used to say that TV, phones, and the Internet would eventually be the same thing, and it is now true. No one who has the Internet needs a phone company or cable TV. Here’s another prediction: everything will be the same thing. The online world will be seamless. Entertainment, shopping, socializing, communicating, doing business…you’ll be in the same virtual environment all the time, probably around the clock except for sleep breaks. Banking will be in there, too, and cash won’t exist, so the web’s control over you will be complete.

Buckle up. It’s coming.

Man is too stupid and mean to do this right. It’s not even a possibility. An orange vest from Home Depot will turn most people into tyrants. The ability to control the human race like a flock of pate ducks is a much greater temptation.

I’m going to go pray until I fall asleep. I feel very pessimistic about the world. I think my own future, and my wife’s, are solid. God keeps making things better and better for us. It’s just depressing, thinking about everyone else.