Lists, Damn Lists, and Predictions

Here we go again. 

After all the last-minute shopping, the parties, gift giving, and awkward, yet obligatory photos with relatives barely known and hardly ever seen, we, like Orpheus leading his wife Eurydice out of the depths of Hades, will take a final glimpse back over our shoulders.  We’ll hear the talking heads and talk show hosts review the ups and downs of 2009, its accomplishments and failures.  We'll dedicate the minimally-acceptable amount of time to remembering those who are no longer with us- those we believe were taken before their time (whatever that means), those who went out with their boots on (whatever that means), and those who would go only after they’d exhausted themselves kicking and screaming.

No doubt, there will be lists.  Lots of them. 

Everybody loves lists.  We love them because of the creating and counting and crossing off of items.  Lists are like bonsai trees; we find comfort and enjoyment in the effort a well-maintained list requires.  And so there will be best song, album and video lists, best game lists, best drama or sitcom show lists, best movie lists, best actor lists, and biggest political snafu lists to name just a few. 

There will be plenty 'worst of' lists, too, because it’s never enough to discuss the ‘best of’ anything without also giving face time to all the things that disgusted, bored, or brought us discomfort.  We have a need to remind ourselves and others of people or experiences we wouldn’t care to see or repeat in a thousand years.

But we are not counting down the days of any regular old year.  This is 2009, the end of a decade.  It was, like all decades, filled with particularly bleak periods.  If the decade could speak, it would probably ask us what we expected, especially when it began under incredibly dire circumstances.   This was, after all, the decade that was supposed to usher in chaos, destruction, and death on a grand scale.  Wasn’t that what all the Y2k fuss was about? 

Only those things didn’t happen at all.  Or at least they didn’t happen as the direct result of computers that would not/could not tell the difference between the year 2000 and 1900.

And that brings us to the last thing we’ll see and hear plenty of in the next few days: predictions.  The role of the prognosticator is similar to that of the meteorologist.  It's, admittedly, a tough gig.  When you issue a negative prediction, no one really expects you to be right.  In fact, negative predictions aren’t taken all that seriously unless a recent one that wasn’t heeded resulted in a lot of pain and anguish.   And when you do manage to get it right, people believe that you were somehow responsible for what happened because you didn’t give them enough warning or didn’t warn them strenuously enough.  I feel for prognosticators. 

But I don’t pay much attention to them, either.

So strap yourself in and hang on.  The ride might get a little bumpy and a little boring at times, but it- like this decade- will end soon enough.

Unless you’re one of those Gregorian purists who believe that the new decade begins in 2011 and not 2010.

Childish Things

If becoming a man is, as the Bible says, all about putting away childish things, then becoming a parent has to be about putting away adult things. At least when your child is around.

I’m sure I will have some very interesting and occasionally awkward conversations with my daughter as she gets older. She will openly question why I do or did certain things. Not bad things, per se, but things that are seemingly inconsistent with the image she might have of me, things that may even be inconsistent with the image I hold of myself.

I have a few things like that. I suppose we all do.

I think the biggest point of her curiosity will center on my love of television. I just don’t get people who say they never watch TV. In my mind, they’re akin to people who brag about the fact that they never watch the news or that never-ending pool of people Jay Leno seems to encounter for those Jaywalking skits he used to do who couldn’t recognize or recall the name of the current Vice President of the United States. Yes, I know the time I devote to watching television could be spent doing other, more enriching things (e.g., becoming fluent in reading and speaking a foreign language like French or Swahili, learning to paint, taking yoga, etc.), but so what? I like TV. I like its dramas, comedies, horror, police and forensic procedurals, courtroom dramas, science fiction, you name it. I am fascinated by the interaction of personalities, by arcs of character development and the infinite possibilities of personal action and response an hour of programming can bring. If those pieces are present and are entertaining, I can watch just about anything. Even a Lifetime movie.

But there is, admittedly, a degree of disconnect between public me and private me. For example, I love to watch the show Family Guy. If you ever want to hear me laugh out loud uncontrollably, put on an episode- any episode, really- of Family Guy. I simply cannot believe the stuff that the show’s writers are able to get away with week to week.

Recently, I’ve discovered the now-defunct show Prison Break and can’t seem to watch the episodes fast enough. In the past two weeks, I’ve blown through three and a half seasons and will probably finish the entire thing before Christmas.

As a parent, I know that I cannot watch most of this stuff around my daughter. She has a way- like all children- of absorbing what she sees or hears and then parrotting it back either seconds after exposure or during inopportune moments later. Inopportune public moments. It only takes one experience to drive that lesson home.

I generally can’t watch these shows around my wife, either, but that’s entirely different. Her tolerance for the shows I like is only slightly higher than my tolerance for any of the so-called “reality” shows on Bravo that tickle her fancy. As a result, we’ve learned to appreciate the beauty and utility of our DVR. It allows me to record EastEnders, Skins, Doctor Who, and Torchwood (see a pattern here?) to my heart’s content, while she can record as many of those ghastly Real Housewives, Million Dollar Listing, and Top Chef shows her understanding of technology will permit.

It's not a perfect arrangement, but it works.

Now that my daughter's a little older, her questions have become more profound. There are times when I can almost see the little gears turning in her head as she poses questions and digests their corresponding answers. It's frightening to behold because I know that my time for giving what I call "nonsensical Cliff Huxtable answers" is coming to an end; she's getting too smart for my own good.

It might be easier to have the dreaded, yet obligatory sex talk in a few years with my daughter than to talk about these seeming inconsistencies. At least with the sex talk, I know the answers. Or at least I would hope I do. I don’t have any good answers for my personal inconsistencies, at least none that would make sense. Not even to me.

Somebody's Watching Me (and I have no privacy)

How do you spell "world domination"? Google.

This is not the first time the thought has occurred to me and I'm certain it won't be the last. I am not a technophobe; I love technology. I stopped wearing watches years ago when I realized that I always seemed to have three or four digital clocks in eyesight at any given moment and didn't see the need to strap one to my arm anymore. Even now as I write this article on my BlackBerry Bold, I need only press a few buttons to know the time not just here in my piece of the cold (25 degrees) and currently windy state of Minnesota, but pretty much anywhere in the world. And I have no fewer than four other devices within an 8 foot radius.

Technology is very cool. But the things we are doing with it are also very scary.

This week, I was killing some time tooling around with Google Maps and managed pull up a bird's-eye aerial satellite view of my street. I also pulled up an interactive photograph of my house from that street, where I could clearly see my wife's car parked in the driveway. I could pan around and get a continuous view not only of my house, but any house I wanted to see in my neighborhood. It was, beyond receiving a live video feed, the next best thing to actually being there.

It was a simultaneously cool and frightening experience.

I started to contemplate all the little ways Google has managed to infiltrate my life. Its search engine is usually one of my first stops in indulging my frequent nonlinear flights of mental whimsy, like the time I wanted to find out when "Bust a Move" was released (1989) or yesterday when I had to know the top five Google search terms for 2009 (Michael Jackson, Facebook, Tuenti, Twitter, Sanalika).

Google Maps can use my BlackBerry's built-in GPS or a form of cell tower triangulation (and for the techies out there reading this, I know it's not true triangulation) to not only determine where I am at any given moment, but also show me where my friends are, local traffic patterns, bus routes, stores and restaurants, user photos of the area's sights and sounds, and even pull up Wikipedia articles submitted by people who have far more time on their hands than me to write about such things.

My Google Wave account provides me with a new and frequently confusing way to connect with others both near and far. Google Reader follows the myriad RSS sites to which I subscribe in my ongoing efforts to remain aware of what's going on in the world. Google Calendar combines and consolidates my numerous schedules so that I know when I need to be where. Google Voice allows me to make free phone calls within the US using my cell phone and can even store and transcribe voicemail messages and forward the transcriptions to my GMail account.

All free of cost. But is it really? Is there a price to signing away one's privacy?

Granted, in my case, I freely and voluntarily contributed much of this information. But there's a lot of it that Google already knew long before I had even heard of these services. And even removing Google from the equation, it seems to me that we are all giving away elements of our lives for some payoff or other. That little supermarket swipe card that we use to save money when we go shopping gives the store fresh data about our buying habits (when, where, how much). Downloading a free version of software or signing up for an e-newsletter gives the company permission to install spyware directly onto our hard drives to track our web browsing patterns. That mobile phone we use to stay connected to family and friends probably contains a SIM card or GPS device that allows the phone company to track not only who we call, but also our location.

This information doesn't simply sit in some isolated database, either. It's being used all the time, every day. An article in PC World revealed that in the last year, Sprint responded to 8 million requests for customers' whereabouts from law enforcement. The same article mentioned the fact that Palm's devices frequently sends data on users' location and usage data back to the company.

I don't doubt that these are all generally valid and legal things companies can do in return for their services and products. We're used to these things in light of the Patriot Act, so much so that the average citizen today is far more concerned about whether Facebook is going to use subscriber photos and other images in ads without their expressed permission. But where is all of this data collection ultimately going to take us as a society?

Are the benefits of convenience, savings, speed of service, or safety really worth the data we're exchanging for them? The information probably does help emergency service personnel respond more quickly to those who need them. The data probably has led to the apprehension of criminals and even the deterrence or prevention of crime. But, like the people who use it, it's far from perfect. Our technology might have enabled troops overseas to find Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground, but we still can't touch Osama bin Laden. Nor did technology stop two wanna-be celebrities from crashing that White House State dinner the media seems to think we need to know everything about.

Tiger Woods recently said that public figures should have the right to a "simple, human measure of privacy". While it's debatable how far that privacy should extend for the person who uses their public status and image to endorse products and services for compensation, I do think Tiger has a point, although it is one that should extend to everyone.

But I also think Tiger's probably not the biggest fan of cell phones at the present moment.