BY STEVE JANOSKI
It was in the English dystopia depicted in the 2005 movie "V for Vendetta" that I first saw the ideals enumerated in Orwell's "1984" come to life, as agents of a repressive government rode around in vans monitoring private citizens' phone conversations while "fingermen" patrolled the streets at night looking for those who violated curfew.
Being what one might call a vicious civil libertarian who sees the threat of the iron heel's descent behind every governmental policy, I was always terrified at the prospect that such a thing might occur, and that movie's depiction of how, and why, it could happen, were ringing all too true at the time.
But, just a few short years after the film was made, Americans, in their infinite wisdom, have already made roving vans and telescreens not only unnecessary, but magnificently obsolete by incorporating Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and a plethora of other oddly-named Internet sites into their daily lives.
Now, the government doesn't have to spy on its citizens, because people are so willing to voice every feeling about every mundane event that even the most stringent monitor at the Ministry of Love would say, "Jesus, shut up already, I just don't care."
I too am guilty of having a Facebook, although I am extraordinarily difficult to track down and use it for little more than posting Iron Maiden videos or Bill Murray quotes. But still, I'm on it, and I must admit that it's entertaining and has its uses.
However, what frightens me is that our willingness to share our thoughts has come at a price, and that's been illuminated by a recent Associated Press article on what is becoming an increasingly common practice of employers: demanding prospective employees' Facebook logins during interviews in order to further "vet" candidates.
According to the article, the practice occurs more frequently when applying for jobs in fields like law enforcement, but it's expanding to the private sector as well.
Sears, for example, uses a "third-party application to draw information from the profile, such as friends lists," as a way to stay "updated on the applicant's work history."
While this might be enough to convince some applicants (like me) to walk out and tell Sears what they can do with their friend request and third-party applications, in an economy that remains somewhat rocky, not everyone is in a position to turn down jobs that provide a near-living wage.
Inevitably, some will say that this is what we get for being a part of the digital age. Facebook is an Internet site, one which is neither secure or private, and what's done there is akin to leaving your bedroom blinds open all the time...along with the windows open. After sending binoculars to all of your neighbors.
But regardless, that does not give government agencies or private companies the right to get around the privacy settings that we are able to set up.
These are frightening legal questions that are straying into new territory, and it's likely that it will take lawsuits, decisions, appeals, and more decisions before a clear line is drawn on what exactly is public and what is not in regards to social networking sites.
The American public must have some say in this. Now is the time that the citizenry, which is so prone to overreact on the mundane and so willfully ignorant about the important, must overreact in the sharpest way to this kind of invasion of privacy in order to stop it where it stands.
We have seen what can happen when all care or want of privacy ceases to be a concern - a quick look at the citizens of Great Britain, a kingdom already under Big Brother's watchful eye, provides the starkest illustration.
And as a nation that values personal freedom and self-reliance (even if we rarely practice the latter), we do not want to head in that direction.
Once, being "off the grid" meant that that you lived in a cabin, drank rain water from barrels, and burned candles instead of light bulbs. Now, it's claiming that you don't have a Facebook and admitting that you have no idea how to clearly read a Twitter feed.
Consider me "off the grid."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/144915765_Get_out_of_my_Facebook.html?c=y&page=1
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The death knell of the simple existence
By Steve Janoski
A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.
- English explorer Percy Fawcett
When I first wrote the initial draft of this column, it was by candlelight, on paper, in the earliest part of the night.
This wasn’t by choice, of course — it was during one of those rolling blackouts that struck every few days in the early fall when the wind would blow too hard and PSE&G’s infrastructure would shatter again.
These frustrating instances quickly exposed once again that society’s reliance on electricity is immeasurable at this point; it does indeed seem that we’ve forgotten how dark the night truly is when there’s no burning bulb to show us the way.
But as someone who divides his time between the gym and reading (neither of which require much light), I can honestly say that in small increments, power outages don’t bother me.
Yes, I was without an iPod or TV, but I am no great watcher of television in the first place; the cable could be out for six weeks and there isn’t a show I can say I’d actually miss.
I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, though, and my job would be drastically different.
Of course, I’m not sure how different, because I have only a vague awareness of how newspapers used to be printed in the days when phrases like “setting type” and “upper case” had real, tangible meanings.
But then really, isn’t that the problem?
Most of us don’t look at setting type as a necessary skill, but at one time, it was as prized as any other in the industry.
And the same thing has happened to other basic skills, like carving a piece of wood, using a forge, or even remembering a phone number — they have fallen by the wayside in the computer age.
Before electricity, candles were the “sine qua non” of life at night; now, they are for mere aesthetics. People who have not yet traded in pocketknives for cell phones are looked on with amusement, as are those who cram a road map into their glove box instead of a GPS.
Call me a luddite (most do), but this worries me.
I cannot help but wonder if, in our zeal to make our survival easier, we are turning into one very fat, very lazy race that’s working so hard at improving the intelligence of our computers that we’re sacrificing our own.
Even the simplest of skills — navigation, fire-building, purifying water — are the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of human experimentation, and their dismissal as quaint reminders of a time long past is a grave mistake.
The advancements made by computers are certainly a remarkable achievement, one that will bring great benefit to the human race…but with that comes a great danger.
We no longer “turn off.” We no longer “unwind.” Smart phones, Facebook, email, text messaging, they haunt us, swirling around us just inches away from our collective fingertips and inundating our minds with a constant swarm of useless information that we’ll forget in the next instant.
The sun has set on the days of our self-educated forebears reading the classic works of literature by firelight in the cabins that they built themselves. No longer do we think that a man’s business is his own, or that anything can be solved by the labor of our hands or the power in our fists…the sun has set on “rugged individualism.”
When I was very young, my grandparents were close with a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania. I don’t recall much about them, except that their children often ran barefoot through the hand-plowed fields and their wall clock had Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones.
But there was one man in that family, I remember, who made his own furniture — utterly beautiful works of art that would rival the best to be found in any store, and last decades longer.
There was no doubt, looking at every finished piece, every hand-carved loveseat or chair, that he’d let a piece of his soul soak into it.
At the end of my writing the draft of this column, I noticed that I had black ink on my right palm.
It’s been so long since I’ve had ink on my hands.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
A man, however well educated, who has once sampled extreme simplicity of existence will seldom return to the artificial life of civilization. The burden of it is not realized until it has been laid aside.
- English explorer Percy Fawcett
When I first wrote the initial draft of this column, it was by candlelight, on paper, in the earliest part of the night.
This wasn’t by choice, of course — it was during one of those rolling blackouts that struck every few days in the early fall when the wind would blow too hard and PSE&G’s infrastructure would shatter again.
These frustrating instances quickly exposed once again that society’s reliance on electricity is immeasurable at this point; it does indeed seem that we’ve forgotten how dark the night truly is when there’s no burning bulb to show us the way.
But as someone who divides his time between the gym and reading (neither of which require much light), I can honestly say that in small increments, power outages don’t bother me.
Yes, I was without an iPod or TV, but I am no great watcher of television in the first place; the cable could be out for six weeks and there isn’t a show I can say I’d actually miss.
I’d be lying if I said that I don’t spend an inordinate amount of time online, though, and my job would be drastically different.
Of course, I’m not sure how different, because I have only a vague awareness of how newspapers used to be printed in the days when phrases like “setting type” and “upper case” had real, tangible meanings.
But then really, isn’t that the problem?
Most of us don’t look at setting type as a necessary skill, but at one time, it was as prized as any other in the industry.
And the same thing has happened to other basic skills, like carving a piece of wood, using a forge, or even remembering a phone number — they have fallen by the wayside in the computer age.
Before electricity, candles were the “sine qua non” of life at night; now, they are for mere aesthetics. People who have not yet traded in pocketknives for cell phones are looked on with amusement, as are those who cram a road map into their glove box instead of a GPS.
Call me a luddite (most do), but this worries me.
I cannot help but wonder if, in our zeal to make our survival easier, we are turning into one very fat, very lazy race that’s working so hard at improving the intelligence of our computers that we’re sacrificing our own.
Even the simplest of skills — navigation, fire-building, purifying water — are the culmination of thousands upon thousands of years of human experimentation, and their dismissal as quaint reminders of a time long past is a grave mistake.
The advancements made by computers are certainly a remarkable achievement, one that will bring great benefit to the human race…but with that comes a great danger.
We no longer “turn off.” We no longer “unwind.” Smart phones, Facebook, email, text messaging, they haunt us, swirling around us just inches away from our collective fingertips and inundating our minds with a constant swarm of useless information that we’ll forget in the next instant.
The sun has set on the days of our self-educated forebears reading the classic works of literature by firelight in the cabins that they built themselves. No longer do we think that a man’s business is his own, or that anything can be solved by the labor of our hands or the power in our fists…the sun has set on “rugged individualism.”
When I was very young, my grandparents were close with a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania. I don’t recall much about them, except that their children often ran barefoot through the hand-plowed fields and their wall clock had Roman numerals instead of Arabic ones.
But there was one man in that family, I remember, who made his own furniture — utterly beautiful works of art that would rival the best to be found in any store, and last decades longer.
There was no doubt, looking at every finished piece, every hand-carved loveseat or chair, that he’d let a piece of his soul soak into it.
At the end of my writing the draft of this column, I noticed that I had black ink on my right palm.
It’s been so long since I’ve had ink on my hands.
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Internet fame and falling in fountains
BY STEVE JANOSKI
One of the unintended consequences of the internet's rise is its power to turn regular, everyday citizens into super celebrities nearly overnight through the use of video hosting and social networking sites.
Do something stupid within range of an astute observer with a camera phone, and it could be your pleasant face plastered all over everyone's news feed on Facebook or the front page of YouTube.
It's kind of cool in a sick way, like you're constantly playing Russian roulette with your future- one wrong move could lead you to either internet fame or internet infamy.
I look at it the same way I look at the odds of a comet hitting the Earth- it's possible, I guess, but I'm not all that worried about it.
Of course, sometimes, we might deserve the infamy. Such is the case of Cathy Cruz Marrero.
Marrero, 49, is now nationally known as the “Fountain Lady” after being caught on a mall's security cameras doing a somersault into a decorative fountain after tripping over the ledge because she was texting while walking.
The clip features unseen people watching the video on a screen and laughing at the scene from two different angles. Marrero believes they are security guards.
An ABC News article said that Marrero's fall has attracted over a million and a half views on YouTube and has been shared frequently on both Facebook and Twitter as it skyrocketed to the top of the viral video rack, and of course, that's complicated things.
On a recent interview on “Good Morning America,” the troubled walker dropped hints that she may sue the mall, and the ABC article said that she's hired a lawyer to “explore whether someone should have come to her aid rather than posting her image on the Internet.”
That lawyer's name is James Polyak, and ABC quotes him as saying that they “intend to hold the responsible parties accountable; whether requesting or demanding an apology and requesting an explanation on why this happened and how it happened.”
I might be able to help him out with that because I'm pretty sure I know how this happened, but maybe I'll leave it to him. Maybe he'll get lucky and the answer will fall out of the back of an ambulance.
"I didn't get an apology, what I got was, 'At least nobody knows it was you,' " Marrero said. "But I knew it was me." Well, at least she's got one thing straight.
Unfortunately, she hasn't figured out that no security guard in any mall in any country has the responsibility to apologize to her for her own blatant stupidity.
If the case is ever brought in front of a judge, it would rival that of the lady that sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself in terms of someone being allowed to prosper due to their own unbridled idiocy.
Marrero should really just be happy the mall didn't completely put the screws to her and drain the fountain before she fell in it.
What makes this story even better is that the fall might have been some kind of karmatic retribution the universe is pushing on Marrero- as it turns out, she's got her own legal troubles.
ABC reported that she's been out on $7,500 bail for alleged theft stemming from some indiscretions with a former coworker's credit card. They also reported that court records show Marrero to have been convicted of retail theft four times, and had previously received 12 months of probation after being convicted of a hit-and-run charge in Berks County in 2009.
But at the end of Marrero's Good Morning America interview, she whines that no security guards came over to help her and that, “nobody took my feelings into consideration.”
As Don King might say, “Only in America.”
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
One of the unintended consequences of the internet's rise is its power to turn regular, everyday citizens into super celebrities nearly overnight through the use of video hosting and social networking sites.
Do something stupid within range of an astute observer with a camera phone, and it could be your pleasant face plastered all over everyone's news feed on Facebook or the front page of YouTube.
It's kind of cool in a sick way, like you're constantly playing Russian roulette with your future- one wrong move could lead you to either internet fame or internet infamy.
I look at it the same way I look at the odds of a comet hitting the Earth- it's possible, I guess, but I'm not all that worried about it.
Of course, sometimes, we might deserve the infamy. Such is the case of Cathy Cruz Marrero.
Marrero, 49, is now nationally known as the “Fountain Lady” after being caught on a mall's security cameras doing a somersault into a decorative fountain after tripping over the ledge because she was texting while walking.
The clip features unseen people watching the video on a screen and laughing at the scene from two different angles. Marrero believes they are security guards.
An ABC News article said that Marrero's fall has attracted over a million and a half views on YouTube and has been shared frequently on both Facebook and Twitter as it skyrocketed to the top of the viral video rack, and of course, that's complicated things.
On a recent interview on “Good Morning America,” the troubled walker dropped hints that she may sue the mall, and the ABC article said that she's hired a lawyer to “explore whether someone should have come to her aid rather than posting her image on the Internet.”
That lawyer's name is James Polyak, and ABC quotes him as saying that they “intend to hold the responsible parties accountable; whether requesting or demanding an apology and requesting an explanation on why this happened and how it happened.”
I might be able to help him out with that because I'm pretty sure I know how this happened, but maybe I'll leave it to him. Maybe he'll get lucky and the answer will fall out of the back of an ambulance.
"I didn't get an apology, what I got was, 'At least nobody knows it was you,' " Marrero said. "But I knew it was me." Well, at least she's got one thing straight.
Unfortunately, she hasn't figured out that no security guard in any mall in any country has the responsibility to apologize to her for her own blatant stupidity.
If the case is ever brought in front of a judge, it would rival that of the lady that sued McDonald's for spilling hot coffee on herself in terms of someone being allowed to prosper due to their own unbridled idiocy.
Marrero should really just be happy the mall didn't completely put the screws to her and drain the fountain before she fell in it.
What makes this story even better is that the fall might have been some kind of karmatic retribution the universe is pushing on Marrero- as it turns out, she's got her own legal troubles.
ABC reported that she's been out on $7,500 bail for alleged theft stemming from some indiscretions with a former coworker's credit card. They also reported that court records show Marrero to have been convicted of retail theft four times, and had previously received 12 months of probation after being convicted of a hit-and-run charge in Berks County in 2009.
But at the end of Marrero's Good Morning America interview, she whines that no security guards came over to help her and that, “nobody took my feelings into consideration.”
As Don King might say, “Only in America.”
E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com
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