THIS IS NOT ABOUT HACKING

This post is in steps that go from the very specific to the universal.  The subject is the Internet and its degeneration towards paralysis.  This is not about hacking.

Picture a little old lady in her nightie at 4AM composing a message for an English publisher of an article she wrote.  Suddenly her computer is turned off by some outside force.  In a minute there is a message that comes on -- though the computer is off -- in a little label to say that in another minute it can be turned back on.  This is true.  An automated message is sent to Apple.  The heading is “Panic Response” and the rest is code.

LOL mentally pictures a transmission tower destroyed in the nearby forest fire; or the sun’s current outbursts sending a tongue of destruction to all satellites; or WWIII breaking out and Dick Cheney is at the door; or a tsunami.

Later in the morning LOL (me) contacts the techies in Great Falls who have the contract to “support” 3Rivers, my provider.  They are very selective about what they consider “support” and simply give me lots of boiler plate.  There’s a little edge of sarcasm.  “If these people don’t know what they are doing, they should stay off.”  They don't listen to what I say, but have prepared speeches for the most common problems and talk right over the top of me.

I call friends.  Then Google.  The story is that Yosemite OS is wiping the entire hard drives of MacBooks, destroying Wi-Fi, installing hard-to-remove malware, and generally raising hell.  People are scrambling to get rid of Yosemite, which is not easy.  There’s a thing called Mavericks.  Maybe I’d better think about Linux.  IPhoto won't work unless I update, but the update is not available in the US.  IPages won't update but at least it works.  It won't update because of "security reasons."

The only reason I signed up for Yosemite was that my social websites and movie providers claimed they wouldn’t work without it.  Clearly an underground collusion for extortion.  And we worry about China.

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Now picture a little community on the prairie that is dependent on industrial agriculture: that means small grains and alfalfa raised under irrigation from the mountain run-offs with giant ag machines, many chemicals, and a storage and shipping system that reaches around the globe.  The town only supplies amenities for the few hundred people on ranches and so on:  schools, stores, library, gas pumps, a bank branch, churches, one grocery store.  One or two little businesses few of whom know how to run a business online.

Everyone keeps their heads down.  Computers are for kids and men, who only operate spreadsheets and monitor the commodities market.  TV is for vegging out with exhaustion after a hard day.  Few can get up enthusiasm for town council meetings, infrastructure meetings of any kind.   They will not join together to make the town computer-friendly.  If surveyed, they say they want to eliminate dust, potholes and chickens. 

The power infrastructure produces “dirty” electricity and every now and then there’s a “brownout” that destroys some machines -- fridge, computers.  The telephone is old and faulty-- lots of wrong numbers, ringing when no one is on the line, etc. 

Power and telephone are operated by cooperatives but they are not TRUE cooperatives because no one has the time, energy or information needed.  3Rivers contracts out  tech support to a Great Falls organization that serves several outfits.  They have a steady stream of techs because of the Air Force base.

The techs are not likely to be local, though computer adept kids are close to being ready, but with those skills they can travel.  Malmstrom people follow orders.  No questions.  They see MAC on something like the same terms as high school rival athletic teams, sort of a necessary evil.

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All the prairie states are corrupt.  All states are corrupt. Places where large territories are privately owned (ranches) or leased from the government (ranches) then the power goes to people who have territory (ranches).  Now the problem is not lots of little people who live out to the edges of their income, but corporations who pretend to be people and bend the laws to suit themselves.  They are quite possibly in Japan. They do not join telephone cooperatives.  They might own their own satellites.  (Sat phones work on ranches a lot better than cell phones because of terrain.)

Prairie states are full of legal and technical artifacts  because there is not enough population to insist on updating and because the young tend to leave rather than reform.  Old folks control many institutions for the same reason.  They lose brain grip but deny it.  In their minds, their health is based on endurance and mental health is based on dominance: so long as they can dominate, they’re okay.  They do not want to give up, nor do they want to go to a doc who might be a youngster or a girl.  Sometimes the doc himself is losing it.

Once people get a foothold on corruption, they know where the bodies are buried and can use threats to reveal to deflect regulation.

No one has ever made a study of the many old ranchers, miners, loners, obstinate hermits who have died with no will or family.  Where does the ownership and money go?  Lawyers know.

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On the ground floor, this shuffle is shafting people through something they had come to think of as a pleasure, a communal possession, and a safety device in case of national attack. They are surprised, indignant, but they don’t have any connections or power or understanding of what the problem might be.

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The economy has now dumped out a lot of potential tech coders into a world they thought would be better because of their college and grad school degrees.  To keep employed because of their massive student loan burden, they are taking dumb jobs that only SEEM like they pay well because rents and food in the area are so high and because their work is grindingly boring.

But the bait is strike-it-rich (the ‘49ers could have told them) brilliant new ideas that will put them on top.  Instead they mostly think up ornamentation that demands more time and attention from users.

The internet is international, universal.  National boundaries will not hold back the predators, even if they are aimed at the nation.  The internet is one of the humanities, just like the arts.  No boundary can hold the humanities.

Power goes to violence as enforcer when the offense is material and the fruits of most piracies are material goods.  So the punishment is also material goods, maybe human bodies or habitations.  Maybe priceless cultural treasures, not sold but destroyed.

We are discovering that, like the relationship between energy and matter, communication translates to structure.  But how?  Terms? Consequences?  DE-struction or CON-struction?  But that’s way too complex and abstract to help an old woman at 4AM caught in a revolving door of passwords.  And must she check yet again to see whether her IP is blacklisted for spam at someone else’s computer?

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Maybe I should rethink everything.  Streaming films means being limited to pop trash.  Putting energy into daily blogs means the long manuscripts are neglected.  Maybe I’m too tied to an old-fashioned system or old-fashioned notions of what writing is about.  Maybe my cloistered life is not protected enough.  Maybe it’s TOO guarded and I’m not getting the big picture.  Or maybe it’s not me at all.

All this is over-reacting to a simple common struggle with the internet?  I don’t think so.  It’s just a symptom of something bigger than me, maybe bigger than all of us.  And it’s growing.  I think of global warming.

Almost immediately I get this comment that couldn't be posted:  . . ." I really liked your piece this morning. I tried to make a comment but I was closed out a couple of different ways, proving the point of your writing!"  He used my email, but it is often blacklisted.  I checked Spam.haus.org.  It was okay, but it doesn't list everything.