I'm afraid I can't do that Dave

Before I go on my anti-technology apolcalyptic tirade, let me first say that I love the internet. The world (I'm speaking of my own personal version of the world. I can't tell you what dudes in Namibia call "the world.") is dependent on the internet to streamline our workflows, shorten (if not outright eliminate) the distance between far away nations and reconnect with that girl who totally made out with you in seventh grade. The internet makes everything easier, faster, more accessible. I love the internet for that. As somebody who continually pines for a 30 hour day, I appreciate the internet for saving me untold hours of my life that would otherwise be spend researching things at the librbary or *GASP* walking to the store to buy porno mags. I just wish I could have all this without worrying that my privacy is largely a thing of the past.

I listen to music on Pandora. I do whatever it is people do on Facebook. There is no reason these two should be linked in any way. But every time a new song plays on Pandora, it tells me a Facebook friend who likes that artist. First off, I don't care that Henry Te likes Lil Wayne. (Side note: Yo Henry, where you at? We haven't talked since high school man!) Second, deceptive privacy settings or not, how is my Facebook profile even linked to my Pandora account? I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and say since my browser automatically logs in to both sites, they are able to link together. But that doesn't explain how when I go CNN, the sidebar tells me which stories have been shared by my friends on Facebook. I don't have a CNN account. I barely even read the news. CNN shouldn't know who I am.

This might not even qualify as barely scratching the surface. That's what disturbs me the most. Some of the smartest people in the world think it's only a matter of time before artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence. Perhaps it's a bad idea then to voluntarily hand over our private information to computers. Computers are tools; tools are controlled by people. I hope the people responsible for information technology are keeping that in mind. Am I suggesting we're going to live in the Matrix or, worse yet, face a moment like judgment day in Terminator 2? No, those are movies are movies don't tell the future. Then again, there are people smarter than us who believe there will be a singular moment where computers surpass humans. The upside of that is we might get to download our brains onto hard drives and live forever. The downside:

Hopefully it doesn't play out that way. It could just be that Mark Zuckerberg is a douche. Well, I'm sure of that one. I just hope that douche doesn't destroy us all.