I and many others, I’m sure, had hoped that the Internet would help us get “over the wall” for the benefit of our careers and wallets. It has done that for some but turned millions into heavy online readers and typists even with good “Klout” and other statistics.

It’s good to be here.

I would still like to be fed.

Lost in cyberspace, networking around the universe, should have been a good thing and with most participants better adjusted in a growing online economy that still may be coming. However, as you note, the malicious are ever among us, and, indeed, others know our names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers, for a start. Outfits like Facebook and Amazon — never mind what the Federal government may be doing — have us complexly profiled for relationships, purchasing behavior, entertainment interests, etc.

Privacy has become an offline, computers off (!), phones off, pen-and-paper and real space face-to-face prize, the problem with which is how little can be done with it by most.

While the global village may be defined by shared mind, the local village stubbornly remains a collection-and-delivery point for exchange in basic retail and trades functions.

It looks like BackChannels could do with some funding.

🙂

Indeed, it’s author has been spending more time away from politics and The Social Network, some for business in another sector, some for the sanity afforded by solitude, a good book, and a journal.

Well, these days, retreat into the 19th Century (Modern!) might comprise a new dimension in insanity.

We’ll have to see about that.

Before this morning’s exchange of correspondence, from which I have copied the above statement, these items from International Business Times (IBTimes) showed up in my inbox:

Is Facebook Dying Like A Cured Disease? Princeton Study Says Social Network Will Lose 80 Percent Of Users By 2017 – 1/22/2014.

Amazon ‘Anticipatory Shipping’: New Patent Shows Plans To Ship Products Before Customers Purchase Them – 1/22/2014

Hear this, Amazon: the end-user does not want the upstream mill to have predictive validity as regards the anticipation of his next need or want, not that he wants to shop around in real space either to save a buck or two (while spending many on gasoline) on this and that.

And may one add to this: no earner — no spender.

Whatever effects BackChannels may have on global political psychology — well, I’ve enjoyed the project, as have readers in 112 nations, at least — the life-and-work style have pummeled me with a barrage of advertising daily while returning . . . air.

So I have reached for an old weapon.

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