Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

homestead - Re: [Homestead] Our digital trail - "Orwellian future"

homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Homestead mailing list

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Our digital trail - "Orwellian future"
  • Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:54:40 -0500



Lynn Wigglesworth wrote:
If you live in a 'bastion' of liberalism like Asheville NC
<VBG-see I do learn from this list..lol> you will see far different political ads than if you lived in say Sandy, UT, don't you see
that?

Of course I see it, but I don't really wonder about it. Marketers have a strategy worked out for what they think works in what market. I'm sometimes insulted at ads that people think might appeal to my demographic group, but I mostly ignore them...it's their advertizing money to spend how they want, and advertizing is largely lost on me.

What if that selectiveness becomes more than advertising...like the
example I gave about spinning news stories. Subtle changes in and of
themselves really don't have a lot of meaning to them...but over time,
it can change and mold the way we think, almost like brainwashing.

Some of you who live in more liberal areas than me were totally against
Sarah Palin, for example. You guys heard stories about her that I never
heard-that weren't reported here. Could it be that certain areas of the
country felt that certain stories were more newsworthy or less
newsworthy the same as certain areas of the country were more likely to
buy Budweiser vs. Coca cola. How many Bud commercials do people in Utah
see? I'd bet that you could pick a network and count Bud commercials
for a year in Atlanta and Salt Lake City and there would be twice as
many commercials on the same network...betcha...

I think it is all interwoven like a spider web..the media, the data
miners, the marketers, business, government, etc. Information is power,
and it is traded when the price is right. Perhaps in some applications,
that trade, that harvesting of information saves lives and provides
convenience in our 21st century world, but then, there is the other side
of the coin, the darker side. We don't really know how much info is out
there or how connected it is. I do know that it is scary how much it
available at my fingertips from Google.

I've heard stories about the people who lived in this house before
me..stories about the hippies who chopped wood in the living room and
danced in circles in the pasture and grew pot on the hill..The other
day, just by coincidence, I found out the name of said hippie and when I
got home I googled him thinking that he probably was all grown up by
now..lol..the first page I loaded was a recent picture of him in a tree,
literally hugging the tree...Now, he's in his 50's (I know exactly how
old he is, but I am trying to give him a bit of anonymity) he lives in a
trendy, revitalized neighborhood of Atlanta, is a major activist on a
lot of different fronts..
I found his address, his poems, his dogs, his beliefs and associations,
his homeowners association activities, the letters he has written to his
reps and the President, his criminal court proceedings from his activist
arrests, his wife's name, original and New aged name(they both have
changed their names to sound less Anglo and more New Age/Native), his
birthday, pictures of him, his multiple businesses, his MySpace page,
the Yahoo lists he frequents, where he has lived, where he went to
college, his father in law's personal history, where he grew up, his
former religion, the fact that he is a cancer survivor and that he is
vegan...all from 10 minutes of Googling.
He has no clue that I, sitting here in the same house he used to live,
know all of that about him. I wonder if he would care that I invaded
his privacy. I am tempted to make contact with him, as we do share some
interests and have things/beliefs in common other than living at the
same address, but he's seriously into animal rights and is the type to
have PETA protesting my farm practices...seriously..I suppose you
could make the case that all the information I found on him was public
since much of it was from his own websites, but that is a lot of
information. In this country, we have a serious loss of privacy, and no
one thinks twice about it.

Bev


--
“Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to
hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Yoda




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page