Skip to main content

Victims of our own success

Several times a day we are now reminded how anal the world has become. By creating various ways to be more efficient and digitized we have also awakened equal number of Hydes that only end up helping the humans design a more complex lock with more passwords that will soon include the need for us to learn the cyrillic script - since anyone can hack a latinesque key. Just this morning as I tried to update a blog the Captcha key popped up to make sure I was not a whack job computer algorithm trying to spoof an entry in and make some untoward comments or worse hijack the blog and cause a world wide panic. Airports worldwide have taken the terrorism threat to mean different things to their public and implemented a non consistent and bizzare array of procedures to thwart people from carrying all manners of fluids or solids on to planes. The embarkation or getting to the gate itself is an exercise in undressing to varying degrees depending again on the whims of the policy makers and the aptitude and intellect of the person on the front lines. Gaming the system is a natural inclination to a lot of people and to an extent it helps keep the purveyors of the service or products honest. As an example Airlines touting reward miles for flying have to actually let their customers use those so called rewards to get somewhere; instead they try to bury you in fine print not really letting you fly. Soon people realize there is no free lunch and start manipulating their earn so that they feel somewhat vindicated against the marketing gimmic that brands impose on the unsuspecting public. Although I do not consume Facebook as a service I hear from the believers that the security apparatus has started becoming more sophisticated as the nerdy tool which was once a way to find the next chick or date in the form across the street transformed into a marketing engine that could (not sure myself if it will sustain). Pretty soon the user community will rebel against all the buttons and controls that protect your wild pics from that party you thought you did not go to but did because half of the public will be clueless on how to use them. To see this tit for tat manifest into these ridiculous mechanisms has only made life more difficult since there really is no such thing as privacy or security when you are in the cloud. Ultimately you believe in the system to the extent you can afford to get hacked or peeped into or manipulated and just accept the risk. If not stay away from any form of organized procedure be it - flying or blogging or opening a bank account or getting a new phone because you my friend are going to be susceptible - just like our forefathers were more likely to catch a nasty virus (organic kind) compared to our generation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

On the go(zay masta) in Japan again

Cool cat the Japanese are Tokyo at dusk  My second visit to this land of the rising sun after almost a decade. Back then clearly I was wet behind the ears product manager and likely didn’t pay attention to all (efficient) things Japanese. But today I did and of course continue to be impressed. It is as much the obvious stuff like on time travel that is both clean and comfortable and all that which makes it possible. The impressive landmark and landscapes that these humans have put together despite their cramped (or because of it) surroundings and precarious geological conditions could amaze a novice architect among us. But it’s also the little things that someone had to think about which have a phenomenal impact on day to day lives that make the Japanese stand apart. Below are few random examples- 1. Providing a very fine machined wooden toothpick in every packet of wooden chopsticks. The said chapsticks are simply set on the To Go counter of any food vendor/ convenience store wher...

Presumptive Society

Today's world is hyper connected.  I am not so sure what it means but you hear it a lot.  It is probably hyper but not sure how connected it is.  Sugar (fermented or not) is available in many ways than before and so getting hyper is easy.  It is probably more a threat than cocaine since it is sold legally. And what is this connected stuff?  Most people I encounter seem disconnected from reality.  So going back to this assumption that we are connected there are subtle and no so subtle instances of how brands and companies and middle men try to portray someone - A linkedin profile for somebody working for X years at a place advertises to the connected network that so and so is CELEBRATING X years @ Such and Such Inc. Do we know if (s)he is celebrating or cringing?  Perhaps a better way to portray will be - So and So LASTED X years @ such & such inc. Then it exhorts the readership to go ahead and congratulate them for this lasting effe...

Greasy Dra'ch'ma

With all the furor in the media around Greece for the past couple of years I thought it would be good to list all things Greek that people use in common parlance - 1. Some of us are familiar with Greek history as being where the world's largest organized scam was born - called the Olympics. At the time this courier delivered a message by running a large number of miles and that got converted into a spectator sport. Nobody thought about what this implied? Fedex does not use any of the marathon runners instead relying on bio diesel trucks so not sure where we went from courier delivery to extracting money for tickets to watch people balance themselves on a pommel horse - which by the way is quite different from a Trojan Horse - 2. which brings me to the next invention from Greek mythology that finds use today - except used in the computer virus arena. This innocuos program is accepted by a computer since it looks friendly only to unleash undesirable effects leading to loss of s...