I found some old stuff, while I was cleaning up my soon to be sold Windows XP laptop. I am going to post it to the ole blog. Here is a piece, I wrote in London 2001 about your modern shadow.
Invisible you.
The things that count today & tomorrow are invisible. With the exception of immediate family and peers, you can’t see, feel or smell the most important things now or in the future.
These things vary depending on geography and beliefs. But here they are, get ready, the invisible you will show up more often in your life. Invisible you follows you around, visits places you have never been and tells people things you don’t even know about.
Information:
You have an invisible
trail, an invisible tail really, it’s growing every day. You are watched, tracked, tagged and
monitored. For good or bad there is a
mounting pile of data about you, an invisible outline of your life and actions. 300 images a day if you live in London
You can’t touch your invisible tail, don’t know that most of it is out there, but your life depends on it. Your right to fly, drive, get medical care, make a purchase, access certain areas and privileges is all determined by information.
This information is bought, sold, created, stolen, copied and manipulated by people and machines you will never see or know about. The matrix is thin today, but growing exponentially thicker. Today your tail follows you, tomorrow it may lead. Fear it or revel in it, the invisible tail grows and the digital forest entangles you a little more everyday.
Messages & media:
You like Coke! You don’t ask why. Your body and sense of taste don’t actually
count in this matter. Your head and the
messages do!
If blindfolded and offered a drink, you, like a majority of people (true fact) prefer Pepsi 60% over Coke 30%.
Yet if shown the
label and logo in a taste test you will (60% chance) prefer coke.
Who is in charge? You ask for, consume and enjoy Coke because you see messages telling what you like.
These messages
work when you aren’t paying attention. One of Coke’s market reach goals was to have a Coke available within 75
feet of every man woman and child. Bet
you have one around now.
Who is in control you or the messages. Can you escape coke? Do you want to? It is surrounding you right now. Are you in the Coke matrix, try and get out.
It doesn’t
matter. You have seen enough messages to
like Coke. The value of this fact and
the messages in your head mean Coke has over $40 billion in brand value as a
company. There are one billion 8 oz. servings
consumed everyday. Think about that.
The value of Coke is derived from a slice of gray matter in your head that drives your behaviour. Guinea pig.
The most valuable real estate in the world sits on the necks of 6 billion people. Because most of these heads are poor, the biggest industries are only interested in the rich necks. Wouldn’t you be? Who do you try to influence in your life?
Creating invisible worlds of information:
A tree falls in the forest and a CNN cameraman isn’t around to report it. Does it make a sound?
A bomb blows up
10 miles away, no one is hurt and the media doesn’t report it. Did the bomb really blow up?
You experience fear, anger, excitement, desire and beliefs based on what you see and are presented with. It’s all digits, ink and glowing phospher on screens. You can probably count the real celebrities, crimes, famines and wars you seen on 2 hands.
These things
might not ever come into your reality, yet you still care, why, most likely
because you think others will care or interested as well.
Try reading the
websites from a foreign country. www.rediff.com ( India dubai
Yet for most
people the world presented through a glowing box is reality.
Without these messages you wouldn’t know that you were in danger, had an opportunity of a lifetime or were supposed to dress in a certain way and eat the right food to live a little longer.
Messages are
cheap and everywhere. You live in the
modern world and like most people will see over 2,000 messages advertising
messages today. Who pays for them and
how do they affect how you see and act in the world? To busy to think? It becomes invisible, part of the background.
Visit a 3rd world country and see how fast things shrink when the messages disappear. You may also notice other things become a lot more vivid and real, the moon at night, the rise and fall of the tides, the people around you.
We are social
animals (advanced primates really) and act according to the group. But what if the group doesn’t exist, but is
digital. Ever wonder why people know more
about the lives of people on the TV show Friends than their own relatives?
DNA:
"This above all. To thyne own self be true."
- William Shakespeare
Tarot cards,
psychics and mediums are big multi-billion dollar businesses. One psychic telephone hotline in the US
You can’t see it, but it will tell who you really came from. It will tell you, what you are capable doing. Ask DNA nicely and it may even tell you how long you have got to live.
Law:
We behave
publicly in a certain way, and in democracies we decide the right and wrong
ways of behaviour should be fixed and apply to everyone. This social convention is law.
Hernando de Soto
The invisible power of law keeps some in power, some in poverty. Learn about it, change it and release the 3rd world from its own invisible shackles.
It is not the rich that make the poor, poor, it is rights. You can’t see them, can’t touch, but woe be he or she who loses them.
Some will die to get them. Some travel to new lands seeking this invisible service. New technology and with it new questions mean that these rights and new ones will become more important. Who decides your future, your children’s?
Invisible you is more important than regular you.
These invisible things act in the realm of what is known as collective culture. Our overlapping group identities and beliefs determine how and when we participate with the invisible you.
So, who are you? Who is the invisible you and what is the invisible future going to offer you? Can you stop it? Do you want to?
