The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

So the phone rings early this morning and since I don’t have Caller ID, I answer it with my usual Hello, no clue who’s wanting to talk at me. I know, I’m the last man in the industrialized nations of the world who doesn’t have Caller ID so you’re thinking I deserve what I get when I pick up. The price you pay for being a Luddite, I guess.

The too cheerful voice on the other end starts right in with how am I today and I say I’m just hunky-dory and she says how glad she is I’m not the last person she talked to who was as cranky as her mother-in-law but before I can slide an answer in edgewise she’s off and running how she and the good folks for some breast cancer something or other are trying to do good in this miserable world, trying to save lives, trying to … I try my best to slip in and tell her we have our own charities we … trying to save the planet from disease and misfortune and would we help in some small way if they …. I make another attempt to … just send us a letter of commitment, nothing would be too small, anything would ….

Finally I just talk over her, fully aware that now I’M THE CRANKY MOTHER-IN-LAW FROM HELL WHO WON’T SAVE WOMEN’S BREASTS FROM THE RAVAGES OF CANCER!!, the curmudgeon who won’t write a check for some measly sum too small to pay for their stamps and letterheads even, who would rather give to some other less worthy organization, who …

And I realize in mid-apology for my crappy life … she’s hung up and moved on to the next name on her list. No more small talk, no appreciative mumbling how we all give in our own small way, no goodbye, just a phone gone dead. So now I’m not only feeling bad turning down what may very well be a legitimate organization dedicated to stopping cancer in its tracks, I’m pissed off. Great, just flippin great.

This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this position, feeling aggrieved and angry, but it’s going to be the last time. No more listening to solicitations from now on. No! I’m channeling the last caller’s mother-in-law from here on out. And unless I miss my guess, she’s probably a nice old lady….

I hear a lot of theories why Trump won a year ago, everything from Hillbilly Elegy to White Trash Backlash. Folks feel like Washington – a euphemism for the Damn Gov’t. – isn’t interested in helping them. That the rich run the show and the poor should have their Medicaid cut. So they voted for a rich guy who lies when he claims the media is faux news. They voted hoping he would shake up the Damn Government.

I don’t think they thought he’d bring back coal jobs — they just hoped he’d do something for THEM. For a change. Who wouldn’t cut deals with Wall street that cut them out of their slice of the American Pie. They’re sick and tired of the wealthy wanting their tiny slice too. And maybe they’ve never heard of the Koch Brothers and if they have, faux news!

I see a future of dislocation, retrenchment, isolationism, automation, Future Shock. Change is happening too fast for us to keep up or comprehend. We love our little devices, but we don’t understand that a digitized world is more and more incomprehensible. We don’t understand, but we sense it. We’re being left behind and it’s not just the hillbillies, although they may be the canaries in the coal mine. We can’t imagine What’s Next. Artificial intelligence, drones, social media, Big Brother, clones, Facebook, nano-technology, 3-D printing, who knows? There’s a disruption in the Force and we’re uncertain if we’re really prepared. The truth is, we know we’re not.

There’s an Anxiety in the land. A sense that the future isn’t going to be better, that the past was the zenith and the present is rolling down hill. The parents fear for their kids and their kids see hard times coming. The jobs aren’t coming back. Coal isn’t coming back. The good times are over. Debts are piling up and coming due. They were willing to try a huckster’s promises, but next time …. who knows who they’ll turn to. We should all be more than a little afraid.

Haven’t you ever wished you could go back and ask the guy who invented the spinning jenny if he had foreseen where that small invention would lead? Did he figure all those weavers’ lives would be made easier with the advent of a machine that would take the drudgery out of their lives of spinning? That the world would be a better place if he could automate those tasks and have those folks run the machines that would ultimately do their jobs? If he could imagine a future of industrial factories and cities teeming with assembly lines, clogged with workers and choking on pollution?
Maybe ask Galileo or Newton or Einstein or Crick and Watson if they envisioned the future their discoveries would eventually create? Could Crick and Watson imagine cloning? Imagine gene therapy ? Imagine Frankenstein? I don’t know, but I always figured Steve Jobs and Bill Gates changed the world because they could see the world they would change it to, visionaries who imagined the future they would whelp into existence.

So when Gates was interviewed recently regarding his views on Artificial Intelligence, I was all ears. What would the guy who brought us the Digital Age think about his Revolution? Had he imagined computers we carried with us every waking hour of the day? Could he have imagined our social media? Did he ask himself if androids dream of electric sheep? Where did he think Artificial Intelligence would take us?

Well, he thought probably it would be a benefit to mankind. For example, he posited, robots on the warehouse floor would be able to see spills that humans might miss. They would also, he said, notice if flesh and blood workers had on their hardhats, thereby preventing potential OSHA violations and industrial accidents. He went on to list a couple more banal benefits of Artificial Intelligence and I guess maybe he hadn’t given this a whole lot of thought, probably busy with his Foundation work, but Holy Hal, what it seemed like was this dude missed the last bus that was going to the 21st Century. I was hoping his bubbly interviewer might ask him a few probing questions, but no, the world was in good hands if our super intelligent cyborg pals could mop up a floor before someone human slipped on a spill.

So much for the crystal balls of visionaries. Henry Ford probably just wanted to sell automobiles. He could have cared less about future automation and humans becoming cogs themselves in an industrial machine. Gates figured out how to market a computer, make it smaller and smaller, more and more ubiquitous, keep the software proprietary and cut the legs out from under his competitors. The future is mostly unintended consequences, judging by Bill’s astute commentary. The bad news is we’re going to be slipping on all those spills he missed.

Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center Benefit Concert
Making Artists Great Again — No More Faux Muse!!!
South End String Band

Once again, despite popular demand, the South End String Band is bringing its authentic, definitely NOT fake, Camano backwash roots music to the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center in Stanwood’s Historic District Saturday, Feb. 3rd, 2018 from 7-9 pm with a 6-7 pm social hour with snacks provided and wine and beer for sale. Their aim, of course, besides helping bring culture to the great washed masses of the Stanwoodopolis area, is to Make Artists Great Again. So great you’ll get tired of greatness. Not that the Band has ever really been great before, but … well, they liked the slogan and in these provocative prevaricating times, they decided to wag the dog. No more Fake Muse!

Happy Days! Amazon just opened its first grocery store that functions with basically no humans. Other than the shoppers. You just use the handy dandy app for your cellphone, let them know who you are, then a few hundred cameras track your every move from aisle to aisle, shelf to shelf, vegetables to fruits, meat counter to bathroom, noting what you pick up, what goes in your cart, what you put back, then bills you for what goes out the door. Let history note that this is where retailing started to lay off its human workforce completely. Let it also note that this is where we humans gave free rein to total and constant surveillance. If you’re okay with absolute monitoring in the grocery aisles, count on cameras pretty much everywhere.

Anonymity, thy name is mud. Stamp a number on my forehead and share my digital information, why not? We are a willing populace, I’ll say that. If it makes life easier to shop, what a small price to pay, this loss of privacy. You might even argue those checkout people who will soon be laid off can now look for more meaningful employment. Fat chance. They’ll be in the unemployment line with the taxi drivers, bank tellers, truck drivers, surgeons, CPA’s, fast food workers, half the present workforce. But hey, I won’t have to put down my cellphone and interrupt my conversations at the checkout line to some cheerful clerk who wants me to say hello or asks how my day is going. A little busy here….

The one glitch in Amazon’s master plan toward world hegemony is this: you still need to show your I.D. to a human being if you purchase alcoholic beverages. Yes!! Bubble gum in the gears, Bezos!!

So fellow humans, those of you who haven’t abdicated your gene pool, you may yet save our species from the robots, the Artificial Intelligence advocates, the corporate Big Brothers, the Damn Government. Buy Beer! Everyone buy beer and wine!!! The future of Homo Sapiens is at stake here. So what if the result is epidemic alcoholism? To paraphrase Patrick Henry, Give me beer or give me death. Fight for Humanity. Amazon … go away.