Sometime in the 1970s my late wife Pat was hired to run an elder artists program for the City of Chicago. Her job was to recruit senior citizens to design and make art to be sold in places like Carson Pierie and Scott, Marshall Fields and other department stores. Proceeds would be returned to the artists.
It looked simple enough on paper: Recruit a couple hundred people, come up with designs, round up supplies, constantly encourage them, pitch the products to the stores and turn a profit.
Alas, it involved much paperwork, her lifelong nemesis. She hated it. She wanted to work with the artists, hold craft fairs to promote the department and connect with the stores. Instead, she and a handful of secretaries were pushing paper and filling out countless forms and reports.
Then, someone had the brainy idea that the department should buy a couple computers to make their easier. So they did. This involved the infamous dot matrix printers, and reams of computer paper. Pat had high hopes that once the secretaries became used to the devices, all would be well. Wrong.
Soon she and other department heads were getting directives from city hall that the new computers were underutilized because they could gather so much more information. With it came the first of many updates what more information should be gathered.
Before long, they needed more computers, more secretaries and more spending on what Pat called “useless paper” than on the artists.
The secretaries were happy because it meant job security. But when Pat had a sit-down with someone in city hall to discuss this, the person told her, “Well, we have the capacity to gather more information, so we think we fully utilize it.”
Eventually she resigned to work as a designer and artist.
Collecting information about people has become big business. My first encounter with it came years ago when I went into Radio Shack to buy AAA batteries. The checkout clerk asked for my zip code. It wasn’t because batteries were suddenly classified as a dangerous substance to be traced by the authorities; they just wanted my zip code.
When I told him I would give him those five numbers right after charcoal sprouts and battleships fly, he relented.
Today, we are constantly being invited and cajoled into giving up our personal information. I buy something at a chain store and the cashier wants me to join their club. All I have to do is fork over my name, address, telephone number, email address, and a few bits of data, and then I become a member. Enough is enough.
I like to have a bit of fun with it. I ask the person inviting me how often their club meets? How much are the annual dues? Is it for cocktails and light refreshments? Casual or formal attire?
Does the club have outings or vacations somewhere? Do we get monthly newsletters with cheerful stories about what my fellow members are doing with their lives? They aways reply with puzzled looks on their faces.
I’m suspicious because I’m sure the Big Box Chain just wants this information so they can make incessant robo calls or solicitations disturbing billions of electrons by filling my email boxes.
And then there are the really sneaky companies who, after putting me on hold for a few hours (time, at my age, I cannot afford to fritter away) insist I take a brief survey on the quality of their service at the end of our conversation. Around the holiday season I hung up on one surveyor, but they very persistently called back. When I hung up on them the second time, I think they got the message.
A few years a grocery chain was giving away memberships, complete with a little plastic bar-code fobs that could go on a keychain. In return, they wanted my information. Being something of an anarchist, I filled in my name as Richard M Nixon, with an address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington DC. The company accepted it, and I got the discount on the limburger cheese. My guess is that there are a lot of us with the same name in their files.
Of course, all of this information is gathered for a reason. It might not be a good reason, but they all have their reasons. Some are topic secret, such as when our information is sold in bulk to someone else, the company gets more revenue. The second company can take all of that raw information, extract what it thinks might be good, and sells the rest of it on to someone else. That has to be good for the economy because everyone profits off your personal information.
If there is any good news in all of this, I am told that all of our personal information is carefully and securely stored “on the cloud.” Now, this cloud is not something that floats around in the sky; it is one of many, many huge computer banks around the country. One of them is the pyramid building not far from the Gerald Ford Airport in Grand Rapids. Supposedly it is secure.
These facilities use a tremendous amount of electricity to keep purring 24/7, as well as more electricity for their cooling system. And, a lot of water, too, which is the explanation for why the water table is sinking. That leads straight to the next big problem of all this data-gathering. It is going to get even worse with each new additional “data center” which is the brains and power house behind AI.
It is putting a tremendous strain on our electricity plants and the ‘grid’. So, here is the quiz: Want to guess who is stuck for the higher electricity rates? You got it the first time – it’s mugs like you and me. You can be as thrifty as you like, but the cost per kilowatt hour is going to raise your month bill well into the future.
Barring that one super big solar flare that could knock out the electric grid and fry the cloud, (and if it does, this is not going to be a good thing for you and me) there is not much we can do. At best, we can only reduce a portion of this identity mining done by others.
Still, the real question is your comfort level about all of this snooping. It is reminiscent of the East German not-so secret police, the Stasi. They created dossiers on everyone, about their purchases, the people they met on the street, the books they read, and a lot more. This moving straight into “1984” is not my idea of fun and joy.
There are some things to retain a bit more of our privacy. For one thing, quit using credit and debit cards for most purchases. When you swipe, tap, or otherwise fiddle with your card in front of a reader, all of your personal information gets swept up. Supposedly, it is only kept for a few months, but I don’t trust that. Years from now someone or some organization will know what you were buying and when, and from where. It could have implications.
An increasing number of people are putting there mobile devices into a Faraday pouch when they are away from home. It means that your phone is not tracking you from one cell tower to the next. For the slightly less paranoid, it means that you can’t be distracted by your device while driving.
Over all, we all set our own parameters on how much information we want to give away or share with others. There is no reason for you to be paranoid, but just keep in mind that everyone is watching you.
