I don’t
know when it will be. It could be in a few days, but it might just as easily be
months, years or even decades. But when it happens, and it will, the reactions
are easy to predict.
Woe is us
when we find out that the webcams in our laptops, the same machines we so
lovingly carried into our houses, cradled in our safe arms, register our every move,
and that, likewise, the microphones that came included record our every sound. Woe
is us when we find out they’ve been doing it for years now, that big money has
been rolling to and fro between governments and corporations, for the valuable
data that we provide. Woe is us when we find out, for we will work up a storm
in no time, and everyone will be pointing fingers in a big old frenzy, while the
CEOs of this world will throw up their hands - in what is by now a natural reflex
-, while the money comes cascading out of their stuffed pockets. Woe is us when
they will then point to the Terms & Conditions we all signed, when they
tell us that these documents were really – it is plain to see! – written in a cypher
for a wholly different text, and what we really signed was an agreement to the
use and abuse of all of our goings-on. Woe is us when we sue them and find out that (A)
they have the best lawyers (for they have the money) and (B) they have so much
dirt on all of us that we are all virtually buried alive. Woe is us when we’ll jest
and joke about the laptop webcams, calling them the Eyes of Hell, but nobody
will laugh and we will swallow the ensuing silence with sore throats. Woe is us
when we recall how we all laughed at the crazy street preacher who heralded
science as the new big religion, for we now realize that he was right, that all
that has happened is a shift of the burden of omniscience from God to a very
small subgroup of our species playing at being God. Woe is us when we finally
begrudgingly resign to our fate, forget about the whole matter, and file the overblown
media attention as a storm in a teacup.
Because, hey, why be bothered if you have, after all, nothing to hide.
To make a fuss is
to confess.
