By Dady Chery and Gilbert Mercier

Solving problems with violence is as American as apple pie

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has become public enemy number one amongst left-leaning Americans since the most recent incident of random shooting. Is blaming the NRA a convenient way for Americans to avoid some necessary soul searching: a refusal to address the deeply-rooted cultural problem of violence being the preferred method of conflict resolution and most popular source of entertainment in areas that include sports, movies, TV, and video games? In essence, violence provides the backdrop to nearly all aspects of life in the United States. The government has glamorized violence by conducting endless wars, maintaining a gargantuan prison system, and keeping the death penalty legal. The US economy has increasingly become a war economy since 2001, and the business of death is booming. Recruitment centers for the US military are popping up in every high school and shopping mall. Television and cinema advertisements for the Marines have the slick and sexy look of Hollywood trailers. “Be all you can be!” says Uncle Sam, who carefully omits from his sales pitch that the main requirements for the job are the willingness to kill and get killed.

Can one blame the NRA when the US president runs a kill list from the White House?

A couple of days after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, president Obama’s approval rating jumped up more than five percent. Mr. Obama was proud and excited to take responsibility for the extrajudicial killing: “shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda.” Everywhere, newspaper headlines shouted “We took him out!” and the US public glowed from the pleasure of doing away with their favorite bogeyman. Killing people for the US federal government has become a quite simple affair that can even be done remotely, as in a video game, with drones that reach anywhere in the world from Yemen to Pakistan. The countless innocent victims of these drone attacks are called “collateral damage.” Most people in the US could care less about them, the understanding being that it is all right to kill people who had the bad luck to go to a market, mosque, or wedding at the wrong time.

So a man loses his job and kills his boss and numerous colleagues at his place of work.  This has become so common that it is called “going postal,” or more politely, “workplace violence.” Every year, more than 10 Americans on average are gunned down in such workplace killing sprees. The enemy is quite close, especially for women. For example, of 429,729 homicide FBI files examined by evolutionary psychologist David Buss, 13,670 (or 3%) were cases in which a husband killed his wife. Thus, in their more intimate roles as jilted lovers or unloved sons, a small fraction of men murder not only their mates or parents but also everyone else who happens to be nearby at the wrong time.  Why should collateral damage be solely the purview of the President? After all, he is considered to be the country’s ultimate role model. And why should Americans be surprised by an endemic violence problem when their role model, their foremost example of what one does with power, runs an assassination program directly from the White House?

Guns and America: A love affair

One week after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mr. Wayne LaPierre broke the NRA’s silence with a press conference. LaPierre argued that only more guns in the hands of “good guys” could stop America’s killing spree.

“I call on Congress today to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation. Innocent lives might have been spared if armed security was present at Sandy Hook. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said LaPierre. Besides this “good guy with gun” versus “bad guy with guns” argument, reminiscent of a John Wayne Western movie cliche, LaPierre blamed the mass shootings on popular culture like “vicious, violent video games” such as ‘Bulletstorm’, ‘Grand Theft Auto’, ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse’ and on movies such as ‘American Psycho’ and ‘Natural Born Killer’ for “portraying life as a joke and murder as a way of life. In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate, and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing on ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes,” added LaPierre.

The supposed adverse effect of popular culture on vulnerable minds is a perennial argument that gets brought up after each shooting, although the details vary. But this argument is about as sound as blaming a flood on the movie “Waterworld.” Violence is ubiquitous in American life, and it is quite natural that it should pervade American fantasies and popular culture.

Who are LaPierre’s “good guys?” Might they be the policemen who routinely criminalize and kill innocent black youths in urban centers? Might they be part of the growing security sector? Or could they be the teenage students who meet a life-size cardboard cutout of a machine-gun toting soldier at the entrance to their high schools every day? One moment of impatience about growing into full adulthood is all it takes for them to sign away their lives. Thus the dear children survive elementary school, junior high school, and finally high school, only to be sent off to kill people in places like Haiti, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There they learn not to distinguish those who are defending their countries from invasion from those who either cannot fight (like children and the elderly) or choose not to fight. The cost is their very soul. Many return hollowed out and suicidal.

A culture of death

By far the most violent practice of the US is capital punishment, in which a person is made completely defenseless and then killed in cold blood by the state with the collusion of its citizens. The shooters, who are well aware of this, typically conclude their sprees in a quick suicide, thus depriving the state of the sadistic process involving a protracted stay on death row and numerous appeals. The practice of the death penalty is all the more gruesome for its discrimination based on race and the innocence of many of those killed.  An Innocence Project study in 2011 discovered that, of 230 individuals exonerated in the US by DNA Testing, 17 had been sentenced to die.

For US presidential candidates, the support of capital punishment has become a rite of passage: the ultimate proof of their willingness to kill the innocent so as to support an expansion of US wars and weapons sales. Former US President Clinton suspended his presidential campaign so he could return to Arkansas to make sure Ricky Ray Rector was executed. Rector was so mentally impaired and clueless about his fate that, before his execution, he asked the guards to save his pecan pie “for later.” On the evening of George W. Bush’s inauguration as Governor, the state of Texas executed Mario Marquez, who was brain damaged and had the skills of a seven-year old; later, when Mr. Bush was a presidential candidate, he mocked Karla Faye Tucker in an interview a year after her execution. On November 6, while Mr. Obama celebrated his reelection with an elated public by hugging his wife, mentally-ill Oklahoma inmate Garry Allen, who had been watching the election with great enthusiasm, was executed.

The violence of the state, domestically and abroad, is pervasive. It is celebrated: even sexy. Violence breeds more violence and, in a sense, we have become collateral damage.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, two, three and seven by United States Marine Corps. Photographs five and six by Joe Loong.

I can hear him now: “Come one, come all. Enter my parking lot and spend as much time as you want and it is free.” So says the P.T. Barnum of cyberspace. Welcome to the biggest parking lot in the world. At one time that parking lot grew so big it threatened to eat itself. Entering it is free, unusual for a parking lot. Once inside behind its flimsy fence, you can basically park where you want. So, welcome. There is no obligation, at least on the surface, to do anything but lie there like a dead fish. You can, if you desire, promote the self you want others to see. Parking spots are available to everyone. When you take your spot, the parking lot owner ask nothing of you except, and this is the main hitch, that it allows them, though in secret, to gather everything there is to know about you and more. It is the hidden information they want as you deeply implant yourself in a cozy place on their site. Of course, they always do this without you knowing what they, the proprietors, are doing. Parking free in a crowded city is everyone’s dream. It is something people are unwilling to give up without a fight.

Yes, parking is free. If you wish, staying in your self-designated spot is yours forever. Saying what you want is also free as long as you abide by the rules of socially acceptable conduct. As you maneuver your way into your permanent parking spot, you think, this is terrific — so far, so good. But wait. Are you sure this is as easy as it looks? It is fun. You can post pictures of yourself and others in your life or discuss things about your life. Mostly, everything posted on the site is fleeting. Here today. Gone tomorrow. But your friends are permanent. What a relief. To be friendless would be horrible, especially in the tough world in which we live. If you delve deeply into your parking space, everything you posted is there for the taking, for the seeing, for the reliving, if you want.

You feel so good about your place in the parking lot, that you never want the experience to end. You want this fairy tale communication to last forever. But, wait there is a catch. There is always a  catch. The people who own and run the parking lot want to make money off your back from all the public and private information they have been collecting from the moment you drive onto to their site. When you got your parking space you, in your naivete never thought you would have to pay for anything. Surprise. That is not enough to make them  rich. And the rich only want to get richer. They decide to sell stock in the lot. The sale fails miserably. People who park apparently do not want to invest in the land they sit on. They do not want the free ride ever to end. Outside investors flee. The stock tumbles into the land of the negative.

The way to get big money out of the parking arena is to sell advertising on a variety of platforms. It seems that the parking lot owners are having difficulty getting advertisers to buy space on the many mobile devices in the marketplace. Mobile devices only work when people vacate their parking space. If this seems simplistic, it is. Mainly all the people who park for free do not want to spend their money, let alone their time and energy to avail themselves of the advertising already present on every available inch of the parking lot that is now a huge multi-level parking garage with no limit to how big it can grow. Growth does not always translate into cash.

Those who park free are fickle. They are the same as teenagers who fall in and out of love at the drop of a pixel. There are other parking lots and garages everywhere in cyberspace. Most are much smaller than the one I am describing. They are for the taking or using, whatever the preference of the explorer. They will grow incrementally only if they fit a lemming-like need or they will disappear if their standards are too high or too demanding. After all, if your friends are occupying a new parking space, you should too, if you want to remain friends. As an aside, do you know that an early meaning of friend had as its base the word love? Do we really love all our friends? I think not, but that is for another essay at another time.

The other day the main proprietor of the parking lot said that people have been too quick to condemn his plans for the future of the world. His world is one that  never stops moving. Being stationary is evil and cuts down on his revenue. It is a world in which he wants his parking spaces always full to increase his revenue. He says he wants to make the world in which we live and beyond into a “more open and connected place.” One billion spaces are not enough for his vision. He want everyone to occupy a slot in his parking lot. He is a dreamer whose thoughts border on arrogance. We know that ambition is great. Yet a question remains. Will the person who spends his or life embedded on what he or she believes is the turf owned by them, pony up and pay the price for parking now and into the future? There is no guarantee that those who occupy his space, especially in the fluid world in  which we now live, will buy into his dream.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Lars K. Flem.

The cultural wars are booming. Be vigilant. There has always been a powerful current of a culture war in America. Sometimes the battle is underground and in check, though those who want to participate know how to find and join its warring battalions. Periodically the war arises openly as cultural warriors of all stripes decide to come out and show their hand. Now these wars against what cultural warriors deem differences in society have a new champion and leader in Mitt Romney. It is time for the rest of society to prepare for a battle that will only get more vicious in the coming months. Mitt Romney, ever the chameleon par excellence, has become the new channel into the hearts and minds of those who usually hate anything modern or different, or which threatens what they call “their way of life.”

Culture Wars are as old as man. Lest we forget, Socrates offended many in ancient Greece and for reasons we will never understand, already an old man back then, he committed suicide. It was as if he killed himself to make sure those who persecuted him would be forever guilty. It remains a stain on the psyche of Greeks whether they and the rest of the world realize it.

Mitt Romney has become the major cultural warrior of our time by virtue of his running for president. He invokes “culture” to define the difference between the haves and those who have little or nothing. He seems to revel in taking on countries such as Mexico and Ecuador by contending the United States is wealthier than they are because of cultural differences. He takes on other people, such as the Palestinians when he unfavorably compares them to the Israelis and their success. But there is more to how Romney thinks about people. Diversity is a concept that Mr. Romney refuses to acknowledge.

Diversity is what makes America the country it is and America the country it can be. Much of our diversity comes from immigrants. Immigrants are always from another culture, another life, and another world. Their culture in the form of poetry, art, science and intellectual achievement sets each people apart. Immigrants for the most part are usually poor. They come to America, sometimes undocumented, seeking a better life. They would seem to have no place in Mitt Romney’s concept of culture. Multi-millionaires rarely understand people who are at the bottom struggling to rise.

Mitt Romney defines his superiority in how he defines what he believes is culture, the defining difference between people. Mr. Romney’s concept of culture is the ability to make money first and to create anything but money, second.  That way he provides high-octane fuel to the far right, to evangelicals, and anyone else who thinks as he does or how he might think in the future. He believes he is superior because of his wealth, because of his religious belief, probably his attitude toward gender, probably his fear of the freedom on the Internet and much more.

Cultural warriors have many causes. They are against abortion. They are against homosexuality. They believe that evolution is a myth and they try to foster creation theories in our schools. They are for family values, but who, really is against them? They prefer law and order to lawlessness yet they believe that people should carry guns to protect themselves against the lawless in society. Those who tote guns obviously believe, as citizen warriors, that they have the ability to see and destroy what they call evil, something I assume they perceive through an all-knowing eye in heaven. When I know someone is carrying a gun that is not part of law enforcement, I walk the other way.

In Mr. Romney’s lexicon, culture is a buzzword the elite use to separate themselves from the common person. Mitt Romney has no idea how people really live. He caters to the far right in his party when he invokes culture as that which makes the difference between success and failure. As an elitist, he is socially, psychologically, and historically inept. I believe it is impossible for Mr. Romney to understand the lives of other people on our planet because of the bubble in which he lives. Mr. Romney has it all when it comes to wealth.

Almost no one has what he has when it comes to money. Anything else he has going for him is in doubt. Personal wealth is not the answer to good governance. Being a successful businessman is not the answer to running government. With his introduction of his elitist concept of culture to his campaign we are watching the real Mitt Romney emerge from behind the curtain.

When Mitt Romney invokes culture in his speeches, it is because he believes what he says. His handlers and speechwriters understand his views. Despite utterances to the contrary, if he were not a true believer he would never bring up the idea of culture as that which makes a difference among people. Is this a man we want to see in the White House? I think not.

Editor’s Note: Photograph number one by Gilbert Mercier. Photograph number five by Beth Felice and photograph number six by “Wyoming Jackrabbit”.

Think about how one connects with others through all the wires that fill our lives. This is not about why people connect, whether they should connect, or that connecting is good or bad for society. I am not against wiring. Wiring is necessary to a life well lived, especially in the digital age. For some, it is probably more important than eating or sleeping or other mutually desired activities. However, sadly we have become the wires that control how we live.

In our increasingly complex world, it is easy to distance oneself from reality because of all the manual and virtual connections we make. We rarely take into account how we actually connect, person to person. I often wonder about the truth of connecting with people, places and things given the power that wires have over us. Because of the wiring in our homes, offices, schools and public places, we like to think we are together, yet we are alone in a complicated world tethered to an outsized electrical construct that can, and sometimes does, collapse before our eyes if the plug fails, intentionally or accidentally. Then what will we do? What can we do?

Understand that I am not talking about major power outages caused by runaway nature. When these occur, all bets are off. Nothing works. Survival is more important than seeing your email, getting a Tweet, accessing Facebook. The grid often collapses.

No substitute exists that will connect us when that happens. Wi-Fi helps in these situations, but it does not fully replace the wires that rule us.

In their advertising, some companies are suggesting they have the answer to survival in the wired age if you subscribe to their services. A new commercial running on television pushes the need for speed and reliability for computers, phones and the Internet. It shows people happily engaging with their appliances and suddenly the power goes off. Faces droop. Darkness. Then magically, the power returns and because the people are using the advertised brand, they get what they want faster. Everyone is happy. Faces actually light up and life goes on, seemingly better than before the untimely blackout.

Look at how everything you need and want in life needs an electrical outlet to function. Recently The New York Times ran a good natured article about a man of a certain age describing how he did not recognize where he lived because wires were everywhere where once they were not. He put a best face on the change in his life, realizing there was nothing he could do about all the gadgets his children and grandchildren were using. A friend described to me something similar about life in her summer place.

From almost no devices in their home, suddenly her house guests had more devices than you could count everywhere plugged into every outlet in nearly every room. Her many guests often sat around, each in a world of his or her own alone, unblinkingly tied to the apparatus in front of them, not speaking to anyone else.

As ordinary citizens, we have no control over the wires in our lives and how they dictate who we are now. No doubt they will continue to affect who we are into the future. Even though we may think we are wireless by using Wi-Fi, or subscribing to the Cloud, in reality, we never are completely free of wires. Though radio waves work their magic with Wi-Fi, we ultimately must connect to where wires exist.

I went online to find the number of wires in an average home or apartment. It was impossible to find an answer. I did learn that wires are everywhere, in ways we never thought possible. They are either hiding or always in plain sight. They have various colors. They are short or long depending on what they connect. The computer hook-up in my home office must have over a hundred feet of wires. I am not exaggerating. They are necessary, first to make sure I am connected me to the world I sometimes inhabit – the Web.

Those wires also link my phones, my TV and the Internet. So, yes. This applies to me to some extent. But, still. Wires of all colors and sizes are changing how we live. If they do not affect you, when you think about it, you must realize they do. They do my life, without any doubt, because if I loosen one or pull one out of its socket or a plug-in from its hub, if too much dust lands on a connection, my life changes in an instant. Until I locate the trouble, I reach a near panic state. Once I discover the problem, all is again right with my world.

The need for all this power using wires was not evident when computers, television, smart phones and tablets became part of our lives. I am not advocating a return to wood burning stoves and kerosene lanterns. Learn to use the electricity flowing in and out of your life. Do not allow disappointment to color how you live when the grid collapses from overuse or perhaps, poor wiring. Be strong when disaster strikes. Someday, we might be able to virtually wire our brains in a way that eliminates real wires. At least, that is what futurists see. Then what?

Editor’s Note: All photographs from the United States National Archives.

I first noticed something amiss when in Paris some years ago I watched four people sit down at a table near me at an outdoor café. They were young, probably in their twenties, nicely dressed and chatting away happily. As they sat, each took from their pocket a cell phone and placed it in the middle of the table where they were sitting. I thought for a moment that the phones were going to talk to each other without the help of their owners, thus bypassing any human connection.

I finished my coffee and when I got up to leave, I noticed that each person was either talking on their phone or manipulating the keys in some fashion, ignoring the person next to him or her. I thought that the four people hardly knew they were with each other. The only thing they had in common was a cell phone.

In New York each morning I ride the elevator from my 11th floor apartment on my way to work. In that moving box I watch the people in it staring at their smart phones as if their lives depended on whatever they were seeing on the phones small screen. I see their fingers moving rapidly over the phones tiny keys as they send text messages or seek more information from whatever Web site they are visiting.

Over many weeks observation, I even noticed what seemed or be couples, husbands and wives or significant others, busily staring at their phones instead of looking at each other. Did they ever hold hands? Did they touch as lovers might? I wondered what life was like for them behind closed doors when they were home again together for the evening. I hope that life on the living room couch or in the matrimonial bed is far more interesting than the words and pictures social media and the Internet are presenting to them.

In a restaurant last week, a family of five sat next to my companion and me. They were tourists in New York on vacation. They sat down, hastily viewed the menu, and made up their minds what to order. Then each pulled out a smart phone or a tablet. The youngest, a girl perhaps ten, started to text her friends – I could tell what she was doing by how rapidly her fingers moved across the keyboard.  None of those at the table, including the parents, said anything to anyone else sitting there. So it goes.

Now take a hard look at the photos that are an important part of this essay. A friend gathered them from the Internet and sent them to me. The set’s title is “Hanging Out.” If you can see the faces of the young people and if you can watch their eyes, you may recognize that they only have eyes for the small instrument in their hand, never looking at or seeing anyone next to them, across from them, or near them.

These photos serve as an example of how everything outside the self has no meaning and does not exist, especially if you are young. Increasingly it seems that personal existence and even survival depends on the need for face-to-face social intercourse.

At one time, a long ago, the earliest known people sat around campfires or inside caves and grunted or talked as they described their day, vented their frustrations, reveled in something new, or were sad over a an unhappy event. Without saying it, people understood the importance of each other in what has become a cliché, the family of man. I believe that is quickly disappearing. Interacting with real people is still healthy. I am not sure how healthy it is to have an inanimate phone as one’s bosom companion. Are we really social animals? Is the collective ruling our lives? Do the new machines we create, as I believe, now control us? Only time will tell.

In creating its new Do Not Track button, Microsoft has angered The Digital Advertising Alliance, the major association of digital Internet advertisers, marketing and media companies.  Known as the DAA, it is upset for good reason when one considers that there are more than 600 million users of Windows 7 OS. DAA believes it will no longer have complete access to who, what and where you are on the Web and beyond if some of those people decide to use the Do Not Track icon. The DAA is probably frightened over the possibility that the 600 million will opt out simultaneously and they will lose all that free information about what a person does or does not like. Just imagine the ensuing wail that will erupt though the digital hallways of DAA. Though not likely to happen, it is crybaby talk. For too long the DAA and its members have been getting a free ride with its unbridled collection of what ordinary humans believe is private information. Microsoft’s decision to create its Do Not Track button still leaves the choice to use the new key up to the individual user. There is no saying people will decide to use the new icon.

Lest we forget, every browser including Firefox, Safari and Chrome, to name a few, allows the user to kill the cookies he or she does not want to track them. A person can preserve his or her privacy by using the privacy setting on any browser to protect him or herself from prying eyes. If you want privacy, do not be lazy. Lift your hand, use a finger and press a key that will wipe away the cookie collected by an outsider during your time online. To repeat: It does not take much to protect yourself, if you are strong enough, in touch with the reality of the Web and not overly lazy. I have a message for all of you naive social media addicts, especially those who use Facebook.  Do not think for a moment that because it is now a public company that your privacy has the protection it never had before the IPO that made Mark Zuckerberg and his friends rich beyond anyone’s imagination. I see to protect themselves that many on Facebook are writing notes that say that they are private. By saying it, they believe –wrongly– that protects their lives from intrusion.  As if a few words will protect their privacy. These are meaningless statements.

The philosophy of privacy is, however, oddly meaningless to many people. It is generational. The younger one is, the less privacy has meant to them – until now. Suddenly, they do not want their lives revealed to anyone, especially those I call cookie stealers — the ones who process the data they collect from cookies. Algorithms have always been tracking and collecting your personal data. Algorithms make no distinctions about your privacy concerns. To utter, as some are across the spectrum of social media are doing, especially on Facebook, that persons unknown  “are hereby prohibited from using, distributing, disclosing, copying etc.,” has the same effect as if you were shouting down a bottomless pit.

People give up all privacy the moment they sign on to a social media site. They are under a microscope and always will be as long as they allow the browser they use to easily track and distribute to interested parties everything they do online. Submissive is the operative word that defines most everyone who uses social media as his or her clubhouse. Don’t forget that those supposedly innocent apps you place on your mobile devices also allow advertisers to collect every bit of information about you and then use that information to sell you products you either do not want, and never heard of or surely never expected to hear about. Social media has almost everyone hooked. Sadly, those many millions are beyond help.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Rob Pongsajapan. Photograph two by Kevin Dooley. Photograph three and illustration five by o5com.

For some time I have been thinking about apps and what they do for us and to us. Apps may be great, but they are also a huge problem. To back me up, comes a story called “Selling You on Facebook” in The Wall Street Journal, yes, the Wall Street Journal, the one newspaper that I am sure is an object of loathing to anyone who regularly peruses this site for a left wing and progressive take on the world.

Non-political, the article’s premise is simple, one that I have been writing about recently. It says, “Many popular Facebook apps are obtaining sensitive information about users — and users’ friends – so don’t be surprised if details about your religious, political and even sexual preferences start popping up in unexpected places.” What the authors write is not a plot against freedom or social networks. They speak the truth. More importantly, the premise of the article extends to other apps as well and that is where the trouble begins.

We have a new player in the world of previously hidden information. The app. Apps are about giving – information of every kind, directions, instructions, name your poison. With all that and more, apps are fast becoming the single most important means of data collecting that people who do not believe in privacy, nor allow themselves to think that privacy is important, engage in at almost light speed. These amiable creatures called apps are taking over our lives.

In the recent not too distant past, advertisers used human focus groups to judge and help define new products and services. There were no algorithms to get in the way of the human equation. Mostly, these real people did a pretty good job. Hollywood movies and TV shows still use focus groups often to the dismay of the producers who believe their instincts work better in the art of storytelling.

If we do not know we should, that cookies on the Web provide anyone who gains access to them information about every move one makes as he or she surfs the Internet, often innocently and sometimes for other reasons.  As I write, apps are taking over for cookies by further devouring our online lives. Apps in a very short time have replaced cookies as the most important sales tool merchants of every type depend on.

At the rate we are going, apps will take over for both cookies and focus groups, dominating every choice we make. Our lives with all the different cyber platforms – meaning every mobile device including smart phones and tablets and every social network imaginable — control who we are and what we do and how we do everything beneath each clever, smooth, come-on interface. This will surely continue into the future. Face it, our online lives, however we perceive them, because of apps are now more than ever open for prying eyes to use the information they collect to sell us what we might not want and control us in ways that we never anticipated.

Yes, I know, apps have become very important in our lives and in how we live. They help when you are lost. They guide you to a good restaurant. They locate the nearest hospital. They find the closest gas station. They keep track of where your neighbors are, if you are so inclined to know where they are at all times. They can improve one’s life. They really do everything and more for a person in a complicated world that is more difficult to navigate every day. But addiction rules. As all addicts know, kicking a habit is nearly impossible.

I am willing to bet someone is working on an app as I write to cover the most unusual aspects of our lives. There are apps for everything and just about everything has an app. Pacman, once thought dead, is flourishing. This means that soon there will be an app for even more than we have apps for now. It does not mean apps are benign. If we succumb to these new apps, what little privacy we have will be lost forever. Privacy used to be, well, private. I care about privacy but many other people seem to revel in public exposure.

There are now probably more than a million apps available for the choosing. The making of an app has become a major tech industry. And if an app catches on, riches follow. One common theme impossible to ignore when exploring the effect of social media on how people live is the belief that social networks are about sharing. Sometimes people on social networks give away too much. That is because much of what is on all social networks is sophomoric. It is dorm room cool, which means that it is silly and self–gratifying. It depends on how needy one is.

You may wonder if anyone cares what you post, and because you may think no one does care, what you place for all to see has little interest beyond the words or photos on your page. This is all the better for the collectors of your data who mostly believe what they receive is too little. The maw they must fill is infinite. The craving for more data increases by the millisecond. It is voracious. Ignoring the need for privacy is now beyond help. It is a dead concept.

Using an app relieves a person from making direct eye-to-eye contact with another person. Technology today replaces the social experience of dealing with your fellow man and woman as if they were live and not microdots on a small screen. Using apps for everything obviates the need for real people in one’s life. Sorry, but Angry Birds are not real.

However, as long as I have free will, I am safe from this new invasion of my prime space. My hermit-like desire may be my last refuge, my final bastion of freedom. I have no apps.

Editor’s Note: Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for online magazines, The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of seven books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

“We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build services.” Mark Zuckerberg, his I.P.O letter.

As we all know, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg are on the verge of a massive I.P.O. It may be the biggest sale of a stock in history. Mr. Zuckerberg says he does not think in terms of money, but I find that hard to believe. He and his brethren at Facebook pour an enormous amount of money into updating and changing how Facebook works.

The money to do that has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is advertising. In 2011, Facebook realized more than 3.2 billion dollars in advertising revenue. Reportedly, Google made more than ten times that amount, clocking in at an estimated 36.5 billion dollars. Facebook wants to reach that amount and to surpass it.

 “Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission – to make the world more open and connected.” Mark Zuckerberg, from his letter attached to Facebook’s I.P.O filing.

Facebook has a very big lobbying effort in Washington and, now, even a political action committee that will allow its employees to contribute to political campaigns. The lobbying and the PAC put Facebook in the real world, not the rose colored glasses one it wants all its “friends” to believe it inhabits. This means that Facebook understands its power, its reach, its importance to advertisers, and its seemingly well-meaning effort to tie a socially fractured world together.

The Arab Spring became one with Facebook, and, throughout the world, Facebook, as a prince of social media, continues to help bring about change. So, despite my cynicism, Facebook can be a force for good. Does that outweigh how it captures and dominates so many lives? Does that mean that Facebook’s seemingly benign desire to kill anonymity and erase solitude is its hidden agenda. I believe Facebook’s scheme, to keep duping its unsuspecting “friends,” is nothing more than a clever way to make money. Time will tell if I am wrong.

Being one with each other is an ancient desire. In the past, people sat around a campfire. If Mr. Zuckerberg keeps expanding, he might accomplish his social mission and have the biggest campfire the world has ever known. However, all that Facebook is, and the bigger it becomes just by sitting in cyberspace as a beached whale, does not mean that I want to be Mark Zuckerberg’s friend. Really I do not. At 845 million friends and growing daily, I think he has enough friends and can easily do without me.

I sometimes will call him “Mark” because I am sure everyone else does, though I see that stories about him at times refer to him as “Zuck.” I do not think he will be insulted if I do not show him enough deference and reverence, both of which I am sure drive him to want to take over the world. At least on the Internet. His is a massive effort at social engineering, the likes of which the world has never seen. But it is not for me. I value what remains of my privacy. I am a fan of solitude.

Facebook is about traffic and the personal data it has on file for about half the world, those 845 million people, the majority of whom are women as women use the site more than men do. Facebook provides the data it collects to advertisers for money, lots of money. Mark, along with his friends and investors, will soon be among the richest people in the world. I am not against anyone making money, but somehow much of what Facebook preaches has the texture and smell of snake oil sold by small time and would-be Barnum’s in the Old West or the new Internet, simply an updated version of a carnival barker. Mark Zuckerberg is creating this new wealth based on smart algorithms that track every movement of usually unsuspecting and mostly innocent people and what he correctly assumes, I believe, is a world of people with fragile psyches.

Mark Zuckerberg’s great strength is that he understands that the world is a difficult enough place to navigate for many. That meme must come from inside his head. It is apparent, otherwise why would so many join Facebook without spending any money upfront. The masses do this everywhere Facebook lives, and they do it readily with hardly a whimper.

I can handle not being Mark Zuckerberg’s friend knowing that he and his ilk are working very hard to guide me into his fold and then keep me in it as he manipulates who I am and what I stand for, all in the service of whomever wants to advertise on his site. In his way, Mr. Zuckerberg has discovered a magic amulet that allows him to hypnotize the masses and to make them enjoy what he is doing to them, as they become willing partners in his cult of togetherness. I am on Facebook for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to be social. My latest count shows I have 160 friends, a paltry number compared to many who are my contemporaries, but frankly, almost too many for me to handle. I cannot imagine all these people in one room at the same time. It would put the Tower of Babel to shame.

“Facebook aspires to build the services that give people the power to share and help them once again transform many of our core institutions and industries.” More from Mark’s I.P.O letter.

I do not trust Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of the past and his heady vision for the future. He created Facebook in a dorm room, hardly a place for deep philosophical thought. Eventually we will know if Mr. Zuckerberg and his cohorts are successful in transforming the world into a tolerant and accepting unBorg-like entity. But we should not be suckers when it comes to substituting sophomoric philosophy and self-aggrandizing for reality.

There is a world beyond Facebook where there is much more at stake than what we see on a Facebook page or on someone’s wall. So, Mark, friend or not, we are not nearly on the same page. 

The most likely case is that overt criticism is being characterized as conspiracy, as part of the sickening trend wherein dissent is being labeled “terrorism.”

I have been unable to access the DHS report, but according to the Computing World article one would gain the impression of a single corporate organization, which in fact is being misrepresented and  constitutes at least three separate and unaffiliated entities. “OccupyWallStreet” “USDayofRage” and Anonymous are all autonomous bodies, sharing neither explicit creed nor operational structure.

I asked OccupyWallStreet for any comment they cared to give; it is important now that representation of all of these movements avoid the misapprehension being encouraged by their adversary agencies. Their response: 

“OCCUPYWALLSTREET will be an absolutely nonviolent event, safe for all people of all ages. Our goal is initiate a peaceful rejuvenation of democracy in America. If we are dispersed from Wall Street, we will simply return to nonviolently re-occupy the space. This is an opportunity for all Americans, on the right and the left, to speak out against the financial capture of our democracy.”

I was also fortunate enough to speak with Alexa O’Brien, a journalist and social/political activist who is one of many helping to organize the USDayofRage (USDOR). I asked her if she could explain USDOR’s association with Anonymous.

“None,” says Alexa, “USDOR is an organization started by no one, to help neutralize the sophist quasi-poetic masturbation of our rotten republic’s political discourse. The corruption of election processes, especially campaign finance regulation, has usurped the primacy of the democratic process.” Alexa emphasized the key role which finance plays in obviating effective popular representation several times, outlining USDOR’s philosophy as “One Citizen, One Dollar, One Vote.”  Regarding Anonymous and their reciprocal support, she says: “I would almost prefer no comment. We have no organizational ties with Anonymous-we support informed autonomous action by individual citizens.”

I want to join Alexa in encouraging everyone to “disengage from the political peer-pressure.” The US Day of Rage is about the manifestation of the crucible cracked and the long-building pressure spilling human onto the street – Wall Street. Plans to occupy are based on an assertion of the right to non-violent protest and the obligation to engage in civil disobedience, when the laws represent the interests of the powerful and effect the suffering and enslavement of people to a lie.

OccupyWallStreet’s Tactical Committee meets tomorrow to continue to ossify plans for September 17th. Their goal is enabling people to exercise their right to protest safely without fear of reprisal, and they have received the support and assistance of The People’s Law Collective  toward that end.

I encourage you to follow the USDOR, OccupyWallStreet,  and Alexa’s twitter accounts for updated information.

Editor’s Note: Kenneth Lipp is a researcher in both primate and human genetics, and writes regularly on issues of public health and international health care policy. He has published research on telomere attrition and cellular aging in various peer-reviewed publications, and is an avid advocate of human rights.

It would not have been reasonable to forecast our current communication landscape in 1971. Access to information was also limited. The best sources were countless daily newspapers and magazines. The French intelligentsia bought Le Monde and some quality magazines; others would get their news from thriving regional papers. France had only three TV channels which would only broadcast from 7:00 pm to 10:00 pm, but quality news still belonged to a handful of government-financed radio broadcasters. Back then, if you wanted to make plans to get together with your friends, you would pick up the phone to make arrangements, or go directly to their regular cafes, knowing full well that any conversation from the previous day could get re-started.

The Cell Phone

Dr Martin Cooper, credited to be the inventor of the cell phone, made the first call on a portable cell phone in April 1973; however, it took another 10 years for the slow-moving Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to authorize commercial cellular service in the United States. The first device was a two-pound apparatus that would make anyone today burst out laughing. By 1987, cellular phone subscribers in the US exceeded one million.

The Internet

The Advanced Research Project Agency Network (ARAPANET), brought on line in 1969, was the first version of the Internet. The term Internet itself was only officially introduced in 1974. At first, the early network connected only four computers. The original version of the Internet was not intended for the public but for use by government contractors and universities on secret projects. Back then, the Internet was an extremely complex system that only scientists, engineers and highly skilled computer specialists could operate.

By 1984, a domain name system and a common computer language were created, allowing all computers on the network to communicate with each other. For seven more years, however, the Internet remained extremely challenging for the majority of people. The first friendly easy-to-use Internet interface was created at the University of Minnesota in 1991.

The two key components of the communication and information revolution are the cell phone and the Internet. They are the tools that keep us connected globally around the clock. They have dramatically change the way we communicate for business or personal reasons. They have also revolutionized the way we access news sources and democratized the entire knowledge of human kind. Anything about everything may be found at the click of a mouse or directly on our smart phone devices.

The Good Old Days of Real Socialization

Needless to say, before the Internet and the cell phone, there were no Facebooks friends or Twitter followers. Instead There were real friends or familiar faces who were game for lively conversations on many topics. This old-fashioned mode of communication had the merit of being real, in the flesh, as opposed to the one on so-called social network which are too often a way for people to get more isolated. There is, in fact, another side to this extraordinary progress that makes people of my generation somewhat nostalgic for the good old days.

Social Isolation

We have all witnessed this disturbing phenomenon, but perhaps it is more easily noticed by people like myself who belong to the transitional generation: it happens in classrooms, in boardrooms, and even during family dinners: people in their teens or early twenties, who grew up with cell phones permanently attached to their bodies, start to text, e-mail, or surf the web. It is as if the virtual world at their finger tip matters more to them than the real world of actual personal interactions. They are on Facebook, Twitter, and countless other social networks, yet when it comes to real face-to-face social contact with human beings, they are shy, clumsy, inept, as if trapped in their ever-shrinking communication devices. Now and then, it is a good idea to switch off your computer, stop texting, unplug yourself altogether from this brave new world of the technology revolution, seek real human contact in person, and learn the art of conversation again with your friends and family.