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Monday, January 30, 2012

Web Mystery #2


When I mentioned recently that a second Web Mystery was in the works I had no idea it would be this soon. I did not know a major artery of the web was being channelized at the expense of its riparian margin. Soon there will be no tree or thicket to hide the flow of personal information from advertisers, stalkers and thrill-seekers watching from their levy prospects.

Google will snag all related searches, conversations, expositions and indiscretions into bunches and set us adrift upon them, for sale down the river --not once but any number of times. That, at least, was my conservative understanding of the new privacy policy. They did furnish an address where one could go look at one's unsteerable raft and see what it's composed of. Several hardy souls of my acquaintance attempted this. It prompted another historically significant Deep Guy Discussion:

Dan: Following the link as instructed in the Washington Post, I learned the deeply disturbing fact that...
Google doesn’t think I’m *anybody*: "...No interest or demographic categories are associated with your ads preferences so far."
The paranoid and surveillance-phobic might be envious, but I feel so ... left out!

Will: Unfortunately, that wasn't so for me. I hope others on this list check it out and report back.

Geo.: I got this message: "You currently do not have an ‘id’ cookie."
I don't care what it means but where does Google get off calling me Cookie?

Jeff: This is slander. Cookie -- or Geo., as we know him -- has an active and vibrant id. Screw Google! Or simply, "Screwgle!"

You may recognize names of some of these researchers from a (Dec. 27, '10) post, "Solstice And Eclipse", in which we deduced the existence of a second moon orbiting Earth, an hypothesis since proven by astronomers with really good telescopes. So you may trust our science here too. It involves psychology and what we don't know about that could make a whole new branch of science --we're that good!

Dr. Sigmund Freud discovered the id while overhauling theoretical constructs in a patient's head. He also found the ego and superego in there. These things twist around in psychic currents to form various drives and initiatives common to all heads. One is the urge to screw and it is called the lumbago. Freud was a medical doctor as well and would doubtless confirm our theory that nothing is worse for the lumbago than clinging to a rudderless raft, cold and wet, for interminable inspection by others.

4 comments:

  1. Good one, Geo.! As I know you know, Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays was the father of "public relations":
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sex-drugs-and-boredom/201002/freuds-nephew-and-public-relations

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  2. Thanks Will, certainly for bringing up p.r., the science that separates experience from what we have gone thru.

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  3. "Screwgle" ... I LOVE it!

    I don't want to know what Google deducts about me by my searches. Let's just say I have an eclectic curiosity.

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  4. Indeed, correspondent Jeff has a real talent for word-coinage. As to making our searches public, what can one say but "Yikes!"?

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