Speculative Reminiscences: Weekly Recap for 2/15/2014

Recently I’ve been mulling over implementing a new policy with my social media practices. I’m thinking about calling a moratorium on likes and check-ins, pins and stumbles.

On the one hand — and this is certainly how the marketers eying all those tasty bits of data would like you to think of it — you are engaging in social expression, you are singing to the world with your own individual song made up of pop culture references and color preferences. You are bonding with that cousin in Colorado, that sister-in-law of a friend, or even your bff. You are finding the gems of the Internet and sharing them. For me as a writer, I’m (or at least I hope I am) continuing to build and deepen my fan base, so they’ll buy my books.

But the other hand is more sinister. You’re providing marketers with your data, telling them how to most effectively sell to you, letting them know what images, what songs, what memes have resonance for you. Talk about the ultimate consumer survey – this one’s as long and exhaustive as you care to make it. Everyone who uses Gmail (and I’m one of them) has more than once been spooked at how the ad in the sidebar seems to target exactly what you’re thinking of with a precision worthy of a Twilight Zone episode. Imagine if every ad getting served to you is precisely tailored to convince you that you need that particular thneed.

This worries me. We are imperfect creatures, our brains are easily tricked, and subliminal tricks can be played upon us. Oxytocin makes us more trusting, advertising surrounds us on an unquestioned daily basis, and we are, after all, predictable and manipulable creatures.

Or what would a game tweaked to our individual quirks be like? (I envision something for myself filled with Amazons, talking animals, an assortment of literary figures ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to James Tiptree Jr., and pop culture references to children’s cartoons from the late sixties to early 70s.) Such a game, perhaps one formulated with by then automated algorithms of gripping narrative construction, would be awesome.

And on that sinister hand again, it would be so addictive. I say that as someone who gave at least three night a week to D&D all through my high school years, as a WoW player since the beta, as someone who laid a decade and a half of work on the altar of the entity known as Armageddon MUD, which has eaten lives, grades, careers, friendships, and even marriages over the course of its existence. The thought of a game more addictive than that terrifies me.

So while I’m not quite so worried about my data getting used nowadays, I do have concerns about the future and how my data footprint may someday be used. So what are strategies for dealing with this concern? None seem perfect, but three spring to mind.

1. I can stop using these networks. I’m reluctant to do that, because I enjoy the experience. I like looking at Pinterest pins and seeing all the pretty colors. I like being able to see what my friends are up and who’s got new stuff out that I can help promote.
2. I can introduce bad data into the mix. I can introduce some contradictory things in there, like saying I like licorice or Mitt Romney. Tracking that seems odd, but I’m capable of it, much like the friend who periodically buys items he doesn’t need with his shopping Advantage card, just to screw with the machine minds.
3. I can use networks with a persona. I can figure out my alternate Cat Rambo. We all do this to some extent already – no one showcases all of their bad selves online except for the truly narcissistic and deluded.

So what to do? I guess the first step is realizing there’s a problem. What do you think, am I just being paranoid and should break out my tinfoil hat or begin preserving my precious bodily fluids from contamination? Or is this something we should all be thinking about?

(And if I die under mysterious circumstances in the next couple weeks, it only confirms the corporate assassins exist…)

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(Feeling good and energized after WorldCon, ready to finish up a piece that’s been floating around in my head for a while. Story elements include Hawaiian shirts, a retirement community called Friendly Village, an old love affair, a smart-alecky fortune teller, rabbits, and centaurs. Here’s the current beginning.)

Old fabric holds smells better than the kinds come about in the most recent decade. The new stuff is all chemicals, rubbing the roof of your mouth like steel wool if you sniff too hard, can bite like a spell’s sting. Older silks, cottons hold household odors: cedar or cinnamon, tumeric and garlic, perfumes you can no longer find like L’Origan or Quelques Fleurs, camphorated moth balls or talcum powder. Rarely, the whiff of a person, a smell lingering long after every scrap of their DNA has vanished.

Most often just the lilac assault left by a hasty dry-clean. But the other times make it worth it.

I pulled the green XL circle aside with my thumb and kept going widdershins, into the Ls. So far the Value Village’s rack had yielded only two possibilities: an XXL black with a subtle bamboo-patterned weave, cream-colored dragons curled and coiled like sunridden clouds and an XL crimson rayon whose flame-pattern suited it to throw-away magic, a protective cloak perfect for what I was after: a trip through hostile territory with no one to watch my back.

It was a pretty day outside, the last days before summer would slant to the other side of the clock and the days begin shrinking into the grey days of fall. A day for turning up the radio and blasting “Dani California” until the sound came up through your bones.

My shirt was umbrellas, parasols really, pinwheeled against cerulean sky and white cumulus clouds. Protection, and even though it was newer and untested, I trusted it to ward off anything, magic protective gloves, more supple than lead-lined canvas but surely at least that solid.

The spell struck up from a black background, red serpents, scales lined with scallops as blue as the sky outside. Slashing bites along the outside of my left hand, locking on, tails sticking straight out as they attached themselves.

I lurched sideways.

The floor crashed up into my face, thunked against my forehead in painful collision.

Then I was gone.

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