The Citizen, 2015-04-09, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2015. PAGE 5.
Ihave a friend who’s decided to unplug
herself. No, not suicide. The opposite,
actually. She is disconnecting from her
television, radio and the internet. She will no
longer read a newspaper, flip through a
magazine or even answer a telephone.
She’s going to an unelectrified cabin in the
backwoods of Oregon where she plans to stay
for three years. She will greet the next
thousand-plus days having absolutely no idea
what Putin is up to, who’s been beheaded in
Syria, why Kim Kardashian is divorcing or
what Justin Bieber has been arrested for.
It’s too radical a move for me but I
sympathise. So, I suspect, would Joel
Gascoigne. He’s an online blogger who has
analyzed news content and concluded that
following the news is toxic to our health.
According to Gascoigne, negative news stories
(coups, rapes, muggings, plagues and
pestilence, etc.) outnumber good news stories
by a ratio of 17 to one. He argues that real life
isn’t that grim and that such a diet predisposes
us to paranoid expectations.
That would help to explain the story about a
driver in Maryland who recently dialled 911 to
report an emergency. Five police squad cars
sped to the scene where two children, aged 10
and six were....walking down the street
unsupervised.
The police bundled the kids into the backseat
of a cruiser and drove them home where they
lectured the father for neglect.
Dad – bless him – responded: “What are you
talking about? I dropped my kids off at the
park and they were walking home.”
I hate to use the old geezer chestnut
that begins “When I was a kid...” but when I
was a kid I’d have been lucky to get a
ride to the park in the first place. Our parents
turned us loose after breakfast and didn’t
expect to see us until dinner time. They didn’t
give a thought to child molesters, kidnappers
or creeps in stained trench coats – and you
know what? Nothing bad happened. We were
fine.
Is the world more dangerous today?
Emphatically not. Studies show that North
Americans live in the most peaceable kingdom
in history. You’d never guess it from the news.
I remember when we got the news from guys
who sounded (and looked) like your wise
uncle (Walter Cronkite, Earl Cameron, Lloyd
Robertson).
Now, CBC Radio employs a frenetic, hyper-
excited promo guy who comes on before the
news sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk on
Benzedrine. I often miss the newscast because
I hit the kill switch as soon as I hear his
adenoidal “COMING UP! AFTER THE
NEWS!”
Me and thousands of others. “The sky is
falling” approach to news is turning off
readers, listeners and watchers in droves.
Mind you, it still works for some
practitioners. The Harper government is deftly
surfing a wave of fear mongering and sabre
rattling to what it hopes will be another
election victory. Ottawa spent $16 million
glorifying the War of 1812 but not a single
beaver-backed nickel to address the
problem of climate change. Are we as dumb as
they think?
But listen to me – I’m scratching away at the
very rash I’ve been complaining about. Ignore
my moans. Listen instead to my friend who
sent a message just before she headed off on
her backwoods retreat. She invited me to keep
in touch by snail mail, but: “Just don’t tell me
anything about killing, war and violence. That,
I don’t want to hear about!”
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
For the past two months The Guardian (a
news media organization based out of
the United Kingdom) has been
producing ‘Watch Me Date’, a web video
series that allows visitors to the site to tag
along with singles on first dates through the
advent of Google Glass, a wearable computer.
If you’re not familiar with Google Glass, it’s
basically a pair of glasses that doubles as a
computer that you can manipulate through
touch and voice commands. It also records
audio and video from the point-of-view of
whoever is wearing the glasses.
The idea isn’t horrible. People can watch, be
entertained and maybe even pick up some tips
about how or how not to act on a date.
From an entertainment standpoint, this is the
way media is progressing. First, it was reality
television with a big budget and cameras in
every corner, now it’s going to be reality
television with next to no budget and two
cameras.
It’s interesting watching young couples (and
some not-so-young couples as well) meet and
get to know each other and, from a
communications standpoint, it’s really
intriguing to see what people are reacting to.
One couple, for example, didn’t agree on
shoes. She wanted to find a young man in a
pair of training shoes while he couldn’t fathom
why people wasted so much money on them.
It’s interesting because, those kinds of
discussions and clashes of interests would be
the kind of thing you would see (or imagine
seeing) on a television show. I don’t think
anyone would be surprised to see someone not
liking a potential suitor on Seinfeld or Friends
because of their footwear.
At first, I saw the brief episodes as innocent
and innocuous enough, but it took me back to
when Google Glass was first announced. It
was a big deal because people were talking
about the legal ramification of having people’s
glasses feeding them information or recording.
Take, for example, pirating. Some people
enter movie theatres with high-quality camera
equipment hidden on their person and create
“cam” versions of new releases to release on
the internet to download for free.
Privacy is also an issue, as you have to
wonder whether people are recording you in
any public space.
Those concerns, however, seem to have gone
by the wayside as the technology was released
and bigger, more important news stories (like
the Justin Bieber roast) surface.
The same arguments were made for cellular
phones with cameras on them and even
resulted in some areas, like change rooms at
local community centres, being labelled cell
phone-free zones.
It all got me thinking about George Orwell
and how he wrote about the world being taken
over by governments that would spy on every
aspect of the lives of its citizens.
Every time we buy a new cell phone with a
higher-definition camera than the last
generation, or bring home a computer with a
camera and a microphone or buy a wearable
computer, be it smart glasses like Google
Glass or a watch like the recently announced
Apple Watch, we’re enabling ourselves to be
tracked, quantified and, eventually, monitored.
I know I’ve talked about Newspeak and how
text messaging is doing just as much as the
government to change our vocabulary but this
isn’t something that can be pinned on any
government (or if it is, that’s a huge conspiracy
and I’m not eccentric enough to tackle it).
This is the consumers in first world countries
saying, “Hey, I’m totally okay with everything
I see, do and hear being recorded provided it
makes it a little bit easier for me to surf the
internet, get directions or find a good place to
eat sushi.”
We’re broadcasting the fact that we don’t
mind if a first date, usually one of the most
awkward public experiences in a relationship,
is recorded and played for anyone with a
computer and internet access to see and to me,
that’s frightening.
When I originally found Orwell’s ideas of
mind control, I was a much younger
person and the idea that the world could be
taken over in such a way was a foreign concept
to me.
I thought that there is no way we would
allow the world to be run by people who want
to direct every waking moment of every
person’s life. Humanity would fight back and
many of us would rather die than live in such a
world.
As I’ve gotten older, however, I’ve come to
appreciate T.S. Eliot’s words more and more:
“This is the way the world ends, not with a
bang but a whimper.”
There will be no great war leading to some
superpower in charge because, at some point,
minor changes will have been made time and
time again (like those that are currently being
debated both in Canada and abroad allowing
our governments to spy on us, supposedly for
our own protection) and it will lead to a world
where we have no control.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we’ve
all handed over the keys to our homes just yet,
but we’re certainly not making it any harder
for people to spy on us.
We have welcomed so much technology into
our homes that there are likely enough cameras
to watch what everyone is doing at some point.
Think about it, many people have their smart
phones, which include at least one camera if
not two, by the bed. Some might also have a
tablet computer they keep in the living room
with, again, at least one camera if not more
(heck, I have a tablet with three cameras so I
can take three-dimensional video with it).
Many homes might have a newer computer
or laptop or possibly two or three of them in a
central location as well as older computers in
an office somewhere else.
Just doing a bit of quick math, I estimated
that there are now enough cameras attached to
devices in my home to watch each room nearly
twice over and that’s a scary thought.
I’m not saying get rid of your technology,
but I am saying beware how invasive it is. With
so many people wanting information for
nefarious purposes, it doesn’t make sense to
make it any easier for them to find it.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
Lightning crashes
You work your whole life, toiling away
at a stressful job – putting up with
employees, customers, bosses and
everything else that may stress you out about
your job – and for what? So you can be turned
away from a hockey game for wearing a Leafs
jersey? Not a chance.
Indeed. There is an interesting debate
ongoing in the State of Florida right now that
has conjured up words the likes of “Un-
American” and you know when that word
makes an appearance – it’s serious.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, as of Monday,
had 104 points, which is good enough for
second place in the Atlantic Division and third
place in the entire Eastern Conference behind
only New York and Montreal. The team is
destined for the playoffs and frankly
management is sick and tired of seeing
snowbirds wearing jerseys celebrating their
northern, pre-retirement allegiances at Amalie
Arena – whether it be the Toronto Maple
Leafs, the Montreal Canadiens, the New York
Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks or the
Detroit Red Wings, to name a few.
The team has been upfront in instituting a
new policy for purchasing playoff tickets this
season, saying that Lightning fans should be in
those seats, not anyone else. With that in mind,
the team has instructed any potential ticket-
buyers that no non-Lightning merchandise will
be allowed to be worn in the Chase Club, the
arena’s premiere seating area and that only
those with a Florida zip code will be allowed to
purchase tickets to Lightning playoff games.
This is, of course, insane. This level of
dictatorship has been known to start wars and
it is, indeed, un-American. It strikes at the very
heart of a free society.
Again, I’ll reiterate, that I respect the team
for being upfront in its reasoning and not
hiding behind some sort of public relations-
friendly reason for doing what they’re doing.
“We don’t feel the need to apologize for
doing our best to create a home atmosphere for
our season ticket members and our team,” said
Lightning spokesman Bill Wickett.
This has happened before and it wasn’t even
that long ago. Last year the NFL’s Seattle
Seahawks limited ticket sales to certain regions
of the U.S. to limit fans of the competing San
Francisco 49ers coming to the game. The
move generated a $50 million lawsuit which is
now in the appeal stage.
Perhaps the next step the team will take will
be to outright ask fans at the turnstiles which
team they root for and if the answer doesn’t
suit the needs of the Lightning, they can ask
the fans to wear armbands – you know, like
Hitler did with people he didn’t like.
In all seriousness, a move like this does cut
through the fabric of acceptance that has been
woven over the years. We laugh and make
jokes, as I have done, because it’s sports and
sports fans who are known to be zany and
over-the-top, but what would happen if any
other business tried to do this?
What if people wearing a certain brand of
shoes weren’t welcome into a certain coffee
shop, or people of a certain religion weren’t
welcomed into a certain store? There would be
protests and there would be political action.
But because it’s sports, we all just shake our
heads and chuckle under our breath at those
crazy hockey fans.
The Tampa Bay Lightning, and the Seattle
Seahawks before them, could be setting a
dangerous precedent. And not being allowed to
cheer for your favourite hockey team? Well,
Tampa Bay, that is un-Canadian. Mess with
our hockey and see what happens.
Other Views
Big Brother isn’t the real problem
No news is good news, as they say