Thanks for letting us join you this splendid morning. The mid-Atlantic Coast of America is attempting to get a bit warmer as near the lunch hour. There is the list of Holiday things remaining to be done atop the old cabinet from the family general store that closed a few dozen crises ago.

So, Holiday Cheer is here and the skies are clear. If it was later, we would attempt to insert “beer” someplace since it rhymes. But that is the challenge of this holiday season. Taking a longer view, discussion of the events in progress could dampen the merriment.

So, none of that on this day. It is going to be a frantic new year with an increasing level of hysteria through most of it. So, an afternoon of gentle contemplation is our choice until the Holidays are done. We have talked about some of the implications of the marvelous social-technical revolution in which we are immersed. Let us first express gratitude to have lived in the most prosperous period in our species history. It has been enabled by cyber-applications that are happening so rapidly as to become ubiquitous. In our lives we have been provided the wisdom or folly of all human history in pocket format. Children can carry the Oxford Library on the way to school.

The myriad of change is so vast as to become bewildering. The quarter century of digital progress has rendered basic constructs of social order irrelevant. Remember that 4th Amendment thing? The verbiage used to be clear: ‘The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause under oath.”

It is funny to read those words, intended to protect the population from arbitrary enforcement of the law. As for 4th Amendment issues, a data center somewhere is running a vast network of servers to determine if I am shopping on-line, what I am buying or have bought, our political allegiances, donations and full-motion video before we can complete breakfast. There is more to be harvested from financial and government records and all of it done without oversight. We have talked about the enormity of the change before, but it is interesting to be inadvertent participants in the transformation.

We will try to keep things light as we approach the holiday week, and stay away from agitation for a moment. The ability to do things at great speed and without oversight has made this ride on the Juggernaut an exciting prelude to what is next! We will talking about it as if it is the future rather the already completed past. A little kindness would help!

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com