Big Brother & The Message Of Our Medium

Remember the fears we Baby Boomers had back in the 60's and 70's about Big Brother's watching us? And how many of us had to read Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Message during our college careers? Then Ralph Nader, American's toughest customer, came along to defend us against the evils and greed of cooperate America--remember Unsafe at Any Speed? My goodness, weren't we in a tither--guarding our privacy and lives as well as our precious psyches against the bombardment of subliminal messages and cooperate greed.

Enter the Internet, a medium well beyond Mr McLuhan's (1911-1980) imagination. What indeed is the message of this vast medium? One can do everything from surfing porno to getting religion. Great numbers of us Baby Boomers are involved in E commerce--some claiming fame and fortune others yelling bust.

But hold your virtual horses. Back in 2001, Mr Nader tossed his consumer watch dog hat into the e commerce ring. He went so far as to call for the formation of a new World Consumer Protection Organization (WCPO) whose functions would include guarding online privacy, intellectual property rights, and Internet governance. After a cursory Google search, I found no evidence that WCPO has become reality; and in my humble opinion, such an entity is not likely to ever exist. Really, if governments can't agree on what to do about major issues such as global warming, can we expect international regulation of the Internet? Granted, since 2001 laws have been passed against spam, the scourge of the Web; more and more e merchants are claiming to be hack proof; and most of us feel more secure about our "privacy"-i.e. it's close to impossible to steal credit card numbers during transactions. But let's face it, there'll always be a few bad guys ahead of the system.

Frankly, I've decided that the Internet is the New Industrial Revolution--And Beyond! Most of us agree that by and large, we benefited from the First Industrial Revolution--if only to be freed from backbreaking and tedious labor. Granted, we had to come to terms with protecting ourselves from poisons in our food and auto companies who calculated our lives against their quarterly profits, not to mention sometimes suffering the interference of heavy-handed government agencies.

As an aging Baby Boomer who in all likelihood has to worry about funding a decent retirement, and covering medical expenses, I'm prepared to give the Internet the relative freedom that businesses enjoyed during the First Industrial Revolution. Nobody's going to get crushed and burned during a computer crash, nor can one ingest or inhale toxins while engaging in E commerce. We Boomers who grew up with television and all the advertisements for those miracle products that would give dogs shiny coats and make everyone blond and beautiful should have enough sense not to believe in one-week millionaires--but, we can always hope... Can you imagine the nightmare of bureaucracy that one would have to suffer if world governments all got a hand in what one must or mustn't do just to open up an email account? I shutter at some of the possible scenarios--waiting in a virtual line for this number or that certification. No, no! For now, let's get used to using our heads, hooking up with others to get the score, making our own decisions and leave the Internet's relative unregulated state as is. For many of us Boomers, it's a last ditch chance at a measure of financial independence. So for now, please, Let It Be...

Onward & Upward,

~Paula