DIGITAL EXPOSURE

I published an essay on Friday describing my CTE diagnosis.  Many people wrote that I was brave for admitting and sharing this. I would argue that it is not brave, it’s simply accepting reality. I grew up in an analog world where privacy existed and secrets could be kept. That world no longer exists but most of our society is under the mistaken belief that it does. The sooner we let go of that fiction, the sooner we can evolve as a society and as individuals.

Almost every interaction we have in the modern world leaves a data trail. Our purchases, our likes, our friends, our locations, our medical records, our porn tastes, our emails, our texts, our phone calls and even our private conversations (thanks Alexa!) are all digitally mapped, sold and analyzed.  Corporations, nation states and organized crime are the primary purchasers of this information which is used for marketing and control. The process is just getting started.

This transformation to digital reality informs our perception of the real world and we don’t like what we see. Minority communities have spoken of racism and police brutality for decades to an unbelieving general public –  now we see the proof and can watch it happen in real time. We’ve often heard our politicians were corrupt – now we see the money move between shell companies.  People have said the press is manipulating us, now we can do a few Google searches and discover that Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ White House correspondent and one of their chief political reporters for the 2016 campaign, has a mother whose company handled public relations for the Trumps and the Kushners.

Shame is the most effective tool to control human beings because we want to present ourselves to the world as perfect. We are conditioned by it almost from birth. Our heads are pumped full of thousands of messages a day telling us we are fat, ugly, uncouth, friendless, incompetent and smell bad unless we pony up the cash for whatever is being sold.

Politicians are likewise controlled through shame with sexual and financial indiscretions, as the President of Cambridge Analytica admitted on secret camera this year.  Why else would our Congress act against the interests of the American people on such issues as climate change, taxes, financial regulations and national health care?

As algorithms and AI advance, everything we’ve ever said, written or done in life will be used against us for further control by the corporations, nations and criminal enterprises that possess our data. I’m not brave in admitting I have CTE because it’s a pre-existing condition that every employer will be aware of the moment I submit my resume.

We are faced with a choice as we move forward, to be controlled through our fear of shame for being imperfect or to accept that we are flawed and try to be better.  I choose to accept that I am imperfect.

I choose to be human.