The View From The Loft – May 2018
Are you hacked? Remember there are two kinds of “hacked.” One has to do with your technological life, the other has to do with your general attitude. I’m both!
It seems like every day we hear about yet another information “breach.” It’s not a breach, it’s irresponsibility. I gave you something and you lost it. It has been going on for years but for me the wakeup call was the Equifax incident. Equifax has everything in the world about us. If you are buying a house you will have to write a letter explaining why your VISA payment was 4 days late in 2013 because of the information Equifax has on you. It affects your acceptance, your interest rate and all the terms of your loan, yet when they allow somebody to steal it, it’s just a big old OOPS, we’re sorry, and everybody moves on. By the way, if your dog died, your kid got married or you were on a two week safari to Kenya, that’s not an excuse for your payment being late.
Now it’s FACEBOOK. Who is surprised about that? I guess Mark Zuckerberg got a surprise when he was summoned to Parliament and Congress in the same month that his net worth plummeted down to $62 billion.
Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. But let’s think through this. We have all told FACEBOOK everything about ourselves. We chat, post pictures, pontificate about politics and admire each other’s children all on a medium that is free. Think about that. Did you ever wonder where all that money came from? ADVERTISING! If you do an internet search for “sofas,” have you ever wondered why your FACEBOOK feed suddenly has WAYFAIR links on it? Algorithms! And that’s all I know about that except that I know somebody is paying a bunch of money for that.
I don’t have any solutions to these issues but here is a list of things I think might help.
It’s presumptuous to think that anybody really cares what you are doing.
Nobody’s opinion has ever been changed by a social media post.
When you are flying, there is no need to text your love ones saying “we’ve landed.” If you don’t land, that information will be on CNN.
Meals are much more interesting and important when phones are absent.
Make an effort to speak to people in the grocery store, restaurant, plane or sidewalk.
Now I have to Google the best chicken and waffles in Atlanta, navigate there and check in on social media to let you all know what I really think about it!
(Jim Coleman is twice retired as a financial advisor and flight attendant. A theatre geek, musician, arts administrator and preservationists, he lived a relatively obscure life until he crossed paths with Corby Winters. Jm choose Newnan as his new forever home five years ago and is dedicated to making our community the best it can be.)
