Net Neutrality and Miss America 1994

I turned 50 this year.   You only turn 50 once.  You also only turn 40 once.  You also only turn 30 once.

Now that the issue of “Net Neutrality” has come up again recently, I want to write about the time I turned 30.

How does my 30^th birthday, 20 years ago before the Internet truly existed, have to do with “Net Neutrality?”  I will explain.

Twenty years ago my friends Alan and Audrey offered to throw me a 30^th Birthday Party.  I’m all for anything that showers attention and, potentially, gifts on me so I jumped at the chance.  With any party they wanted to know what I would like in terms of festivities.  The only thing I really wanted was a pinata filled with little bottles of alcohol (preferably in plastic bottles) for everyone to enjoy.  I can’t recall any other requests I made...except when I got there.

Mix these....

...with this.  Fun ensues.

You see – Audrey and Alan live in a nice house in a good middle class suburban neighborhood.  They had, or possibly still have, a hot tub, a nice back yard, a good deck and large storage garage.  At the time, in 1994, they also had a satellite dish.  We’re not talking about a dish about the size of a large pizza but a DISH about six feet around.  These dishes were on mounts upon which you could alter the direction of the dish to pick up the various satellites floating around the sky. If you had one of these dishes you, literally, had access to thousands of channels of programming.  There was also an enormous guide that would be published telling you where to point the dish to get whatever channel you sought (I searched for an image of one of these guides...could not find one).

When I arrived for my festivities, I asked if they were watching the “Miss America Pageant.”  I don’t know why this was of any interest to me.  Who cares who won (Miss South Carolina – Kimberly Clarice Aiken).  But what made this fun was simply the fact that Alan and Audrey could get the live feed from some other part of the country.  I was completely fascinated by this.  That you could ACTUALLY watch something live and not “tape delayed.”

Miss America 1994.  Pretty.

Soon after I found myself wandering down to the local bar to watch the Mariner’s play from home (when the games never used to be broadcast) because the bar would pick up the feed back to the other team’s town (probably without the expressed written consent of Major League Baseball).

I wanted, nay, begged to have a great huge satellite dish to enjoy shows like “Saturday Night Live” actually, you know, LIVE.  Cable was quickly becoming a tad stale and I wanted the freedom of just looking for channels around the globe.  Pick up that feed, watch things live, enjoy the power of the dish.

Until....

It became regulated.  Next thing you know the “Dish Network” people showed up and the freedom of the satellite became just a different kind of cable network....with a dish instead of cable.

Little Dishes

When I would investigate the possibility of still having access to live TV I would ask the nice salesperson:  “Does this dish thingy get live feeds from around the county and the world?”  “Uh...yeah...I’m pretty sure it does.”  (note:  it didn’t).

This is what I fear will happen if we lose Net Neutrality.  That it will just become another service to be regulated and paid for and we won’t get what we want...at all (unless you’re willing to pay for it).

They want your money and they're willing to regulate the internet to get it.

So does Verizon.

 

And this.

I truly feel that if the large corporations get their way you’ll be paying for bronze, silver, gold levels of internet service – forced to go to only a certain number of web pages, forced to view their advertising for their paid-for sponsors and whatever freedom and enjoyment we had will be kicked to the proverbial dustbin of higher profits and lower service.

They're replicating.

Hopefully this won’t happen and the “information super highway” will still be able to be driven by everyone, not the select few.

 

Uh....

This explains it better than I could - and there are pictures:

http://theoatmeal.com/blog/net_neutrality

Potato Chips and a Experiment in Human Behavior

With the wake of the recent election upon us, I was reminded how a recent trip to Costco turned into a very interesting human experiment.

My friend Stephen and I meet for lunch approximately once a week.  Sometimes it’s just me and him, other times we have other friends join us.  These lunches typically include talk of politics, work situations, book club, trips, etc.

One morning Stephen called me up and said he needed to run down to Costco and would I join him.  We’d get lunch there.  Now it’s very difficult for me to pass up a $1.50 (WITH DRINK!) Costco hot dog and I jumped at the chance.

There was only one slight problem – we were going to Costco to buy stuff – not just have lunch.  That meant shopping and Costco in the middle of the day (hell most any time) is filled with people and this meant wandering the store while Stephen picked out food for a party he was having (nice cheeses, a case of Pellegrino, etc.) .  If I was going to have to go shopping then, hell, I was going to take advantage of that.  So I bought me a big bag of their low-salt kettle potato chips.  These are very high on the “yummy” scale and they’re also something I’m not supposed to buy and bring home because Miriam finds that she eats them...all.  Bought?  Yes.  Taking them home?  No.  I would buy them for work and share them with my co-workers.

Yummy Lightly Salted Goodness

Back to work, I opened the bag and placed them on the counter in the kitchen.  I took a handful, closed the bag with a binder clip (it’s a big bag!) and snacked on them at my desk.

A little while later I walked by the kitchen and there was the bag on the counter and it was open.  Someone had taken some and left the bag open, so I sealed the bag (after taking a few more) and went on my way.  An hour later or so I walk by and the bag is open again.  Once again I went in and sealed the bag.  Let me remind you:  IT’S A BIG BAG and, of course, if you leave it open – they’re going to go stale.

This continued the rest of the afternoon.  See open bag, close open bag.  See open bag, close open bag.  See open bag...you get the point.

It was at this point that I realized that an experiment was taking place.  Now, granted, I had no idea who was leaving the bag open but I assumed it was the attorneys I work with.  For a long while we had an attorney who would leave the wrapper to the microwave popcorn on the counter and one of us staff members would end up throwing it away.  When we finally brought this up to the attorney he literally had no clue he was doing this.  Somewhere in his world someone would come along and throw it away (which, of course, someone was doing).  Once we mentioned this he clued in and began throwing away the wrapper...but it was the simple fact that he didn’t realize he was doing this that made me wonder.

Back to the chips.  This, too, was making me wonder.  Why was it that I was so concerned about the potato chips going stale but they weren’t concerned about it?  I mulled that around in my brain for awhile and then finally came to a conclusion:  They didn’t care because they didn’t have to care.  Simply:  A $5 bag of potato chips is no big deal to them.  They make good money (deservedly so and I love the people I work with) and a $5 bag of chips isn’t important to them.  Why is it important to me?  It’s a $5 bag of potato chips that I don’t want to go stale so that I, and the others around me, can enjoy them to their non-stale fullest.  Of course if I saw the person leaving the bag open and said:  “Oh, hey, could you close the bag when you’re done?”  They probably wouldn’t even realize they were leaving the bag open.

To tie this into this national election – I’ve been thinking about the issues that face this country and our politicians we elect to the process.

If we look at core issues facing this country, I would say that these are the top ten (in no particular order):

1.      Job Creation

2.      Education

3.      Affordable Health Care

4.      Outside Threats to Our Safety

5.      Women’s Reproductive Rights

6.      Gun Control – or lack thereof

7.      Income Inequality

8.      Environment

9.      Infrastructure Issues

10.    Equal Rights

"What's a wealthy politician to do?"

Now compare those issues with this information from the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics (from January 2014):

Of the 534 current members of the House and Senate, 268 had an average net worth of $1 million or more in 2012 – up from 257 members in 2011. The median net worth for members of the House and Senate was $1,008,767.

The wealthiest member of Congress? That's Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, who had a net worth between $330 and $598 million.

The reports found that there wasn't much distinction between the two parties – congressional Democrats had a median net worth of $1.04 million as compared to about $1 million for Republicans. In both cases, the averages are up from last year, when the numbers were $990,000 and $907,000, respectively.

Let us not forget that, also, our politicians are given typical perks of their jobs:  staff, health care, transportation, protection, etc.

In comparing the top 10 issues to the fact that the median net worth of our politicians is over $1 million – something becomes increasingly clear – at least to me.

Before, though, you start bashing me on “wealth v. poor” there is some HOPE that the politicians we elect in this country will have some basic understanding of where they (or their parents) came from.  We’ve all heard about how John Boehner lived above a bar.  Most recently I heard McConnell suffered from childhood polio.  But I’ve also heard how McConnell inherited his millions.  John Kerry married the heiress to the Heinz empire.  This is not GOP v. DEMS this is just stating a very clear and reasonable fact:  They’re all, pretty much wealthy and you and I are, well, not. 

Rich guy

Rich guy with REALLY rich wife (it's probably not a coincidence that her coat is Ketchup colored)

 

Then if you compare the issues facing this country like healthcare, reproductive rights, income inequality, the environment, etc. and wonder why the elected official doesn’t seem to care it’s simply because they don’t have to.  There HAS to be some disconnect going on between the lives and reality of our elected officials and to those to whom they serve.

A few months back a storage facility for some treatment plant dumped a bunch of waste into a stream that provided drinking water for a community.  The owner of the company, some wealthy guy, came on TV to talk about it and, in the process of talking, took a drink out of a bottle of water.  It subtly made my point.  Why did he care about the community?  He didn’t - he was actually from a foreign country.  Besides he can buy all the clean bottled water he wants – but what of the poor and hurting who can’t?  Well, for that guy, “not his monkey, not his circus” and off into his private jet he goes.

We have ten bags of potato chips open.  We all have various levels of concern over those chips getting stale and we have many wealthy politicians who don’t care because they don’t have to.

Social Media Destroying Connections?

It usually starts out relatively simple.  Someone on Facebook will post a video clip of something and then say:  “OMG you’ve got to see this!”  And...I’ll pass right on by.  Then another person completely unrelated to the first person will post the same video and say:  “Brilliant!”  And, again, I’ll pass right on by.  Within the next few hours, though, it will spring up more and more.  This time from another person.  Or Huffington Post or even a friend of a friend’s friend and it’ll be:  “So true!!  Take a look at this!”  And, finally, as if having to go to the dentist – I will click on the video to watch it.  Partly because I want to see what all the fuss is about and partly because I don’t want to be the one person to NOT watch it and feel like I’m missing out on something AMAAAAAAzing!

This happened this week with a video called “Look Up.”  This music video is kinda “rapped” by a British Guy (and when I say rapped by a British guy – I mean he just rhymes really really slowly – referred to as spoken word poetry or, as I like to call it:  White People Rapping.  And the fact that he rhymes really slowly it is as if he’s talking to someone who won’t GET IT).  The plot of  the video takes to task all of us people who don’t look up from our devices.  Our computers.  Our laptops.  Our smartphones, etc.

Of course the irony being that many people watching this video and posting it on Facebook are watching it on their cell phone or their lap top or other device.  And the other irony is that the technology that this song is dissing is the same technology that is, probably, going to make the video makers quite a lot of money.

Destroying your chance for a relationship?  Maybe?

Now, I don’t want to be too hard on the message here as it’s a good one and the story the video tells is about a young man who is looking for an address.  Instead of using a smartphone, he’s going completely old skool and using paper.  Because his handwriting is terrible (or something) he has to ask a hot gal passersby for information.  Three minutes later they’ve lived a full and wonderful life with marriage-child-death-love-happiness-sadness, etc.  Then the twist shows him using, not a scratched on piece of paper but a cell phone and, sadly, she just walks on by and they don’t “connect” neither spiritually, physically, sexually or whatnot (ESPECIALLY not whatnot!).  And then the British guy tells us again that we need to ‘LOOK UP!’  Okay, I GET IT.  Put the damn phone (laptop/smart-phone/cell-phone/GPS/tablet/Kindle) down and connect with the world around you.

It's hard to hold flowers on your wedding day, if you're holding a cell phone.

But here’s the rub...the overall subtext of the video is that we are becoming less social in our world of social media (I think he actually “raps/rhymes” about that).  That it’s pushing us farther and farther away from true connections.  But is it?

These are just electronic devices bent on destroying your social life.

I have a friend who refuses to use any and all types of social media.  Be it Twitter or Facebook or Snapchat or MySpace or...  He refuses to have a cell phone or a tablet.  His answer is not that he wants to connect with people face-to-face but that he doesn’t want the government tracking his every move.  And that’s a legitimate concern.  But, he’s telling me all this on a computer.  Which makes me assume that when the first books were published there was someone who was like:  “Hortence!  Jedediah hath postponed his gathering of wood and is just partaking in READING!  Does he not knoweth that reading will lead to evil?  Certainly it can’t lead to anything good, unless, of course, it’s the Bible!”

Books, just a downward spiral to loneliness and depression.

And then, when the radio was invented and placed in every home, I could see furrow-browed parents lamenting:  “Doris, Elmer Junior is on to his fifth hour of listening to the RCA radio.  He needs to go outside and play, I swear that kid isn’t going to accomplish much listening to “The Shadow” and “Edgar Bergin and Charlie McCarthy” all day.”

Oh, yeah.  You know she died old and alone with only her 52 cats, all because of that damn radio.

Certainly, we knew how the TV turned out.  Parents around the country frustrated at the box.  Calling it the “boob tube,” it was turning us all into couch potatoes – festering starches growing directly into the couch like some sub-human mutant half-human/half-couch/all-potato hybrid freak.  Hell, we even ate TV dinners.  Certainly our ability to interact with others was going to suffer greatly.

The downfall of society as we know it.  No one will interact with anyone again...EVER!

But...wait for it...the PC was just on the horizon – but before that it was the Nintendo and Atari and gaming systems solely designed to turn us into more freakish bits of nature – hiding us in our rooms like Golum, calling our Super Mario Cartridge “Precious.” Certainly we weren’t going to interact with people, right?  Certainly we were going to just lock ourselves in our rooms and forget to be social...right?

Yeah, they may be connecting now, but his love for Pong will be too much for her...

Since I grew up in an age where phones had cords and this rotating thing you actually had to rotate to call someone and have merged, semi-successfully into the world of PC’s and smartphones and gaming systems (I’ve had, over my years an Atari Pinball Game, a Nintendo 8-Bit System, an Atari 5200,  Playstations 2 and 3, three pinball machines and a handful of electronic devices from Gameboys to Coleco “football” – seriously just red LED dots) – I think I can consider myself learned (note, I didn’t say expert).

Seriously.  Red dots.  And it was fun.

So where has this world of Social Media taken me?  Over the past couple years I’ve been able to re-connect with people I, seriously, thought I would never connect with again.  Richard, my mentor.  Taso, my other mentor.  Mike who I bullied in High School – finally got a chance to apologize.  Jeff, a high school buddy, who I found out had married his partner and is very happy.  Monika, the girl I had a total crush on in Jr. High School.  Still seeing her photo makes my heart skip a beat.  And so many others:  good friends from my past, church friends, writer friends, acting friends.  Certainly you can call me crazy and say that these “relationships” don’t amount to much in the grand scheme of things.  And I would tell you to kiss my a**.  It’s certainly far more than me just wondering quietly how so-and-so is doing, when I can see what they had for lunch...or read their political views.

It's all this thing's fault no one connects anymore.

And what of the outpourings of support I read when someone’s pet or parent has just died?   Or the support we give to performances that we’ve seen or photos of someone’s garden or when someone posts that they’ve lost 50 pounds?

But, I know what you’re asking:  Aren’t there some serious issues at play here?  Well, I would assume that there are some serious issues when the electronic device starts to take over some aspect of one’s existence.  I know I became a bit panicked the other day when I realized I left my phone at home when I went to get Miriam from her work.  And, yes, I’d like to see studies done when it comes to those who are extremely introverted or extroverted and how they connect and use electronic devices.  But, honestly, I see no real sustained issue here.  So what, that when I look up on the bus and see that most of the people are staring at a device.  10 years ago I looked up on the bus and most people were staring at a book...and we seemed to go through that stage okay.

Looking at the video it implies, in some way, that if we don’t stop looking at a device we’ll never find love.  I only have to look so far as my friend Shannon’s facebook page (and the photos of her handsome husband and beautiful daughter) to see how connecting through a computer can work.  She met her husband through an on-line dating site and, just like the video, they looked up (probably at a computer screen) and got married and had a child and this has been years ago now.  Who’s to say that you can’t make a “love-connection” through a screen as opposed to accosting someone on the street because your 55^th ave. looks like 53^rd ave?

Or this thing's fault...

I don’t fear that Social Media is keeping us away from connecting with other people.  I just see Social Media as connecting in a DIFFERENT way with other people.  Like the examples I gave above, there is a beauty about connecting – even if just for a moment, just to think about another person, just to relate to someone’s struggle.  That’s connecting.  And, besides, until they make a computer or a tablet or smart phone that has sex with you and can cuddle with you at night, hold your hand, cry on your shoulder and make you feel like you’re the greatest person in the whole wide world...I wouldn’t worry.  Still...they might have an app for that.