The Internet Monster

What a monster have we created with the Internet?   Today news  indicates that hackers have targeted mobile cell phones to attack banks and their customers.   The Internet is reshaping our society, causing us to look down at our smart phones and tablets, not into each others’ eyes, robbing us of our privacy,  and stealing  our identity and our money. Now we are even wandering the streets,  in search of any monster, Pokemon-Go.

In the short span of 20 years, the Internet Monster has replaced the Cookie Monster.   If you’ll recall, the Cookie Monster was created to appeal to children on Sesame Street. Its mantra was: “Me want cookies! Me eat cookies! Me eat anything and everything!”  Its appetite was insatiable.  It ate in broad daylight.  It ate a night.   It ate behind closed doors. It  ate your breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  It ate 24 hours a day.  It was always raiding your personal cookie jar.  It ate things you were not even aware.

The Internet Monster puts the Cookie Monster to shame.  It obesses the entire population.  Its appetite for your total attention  is insatiable.    It is everywhere – on your personal computer, your tablet,  your smart phone, on corporate and government website, amazon, facebook,  Instagram,  Internet servers , even in the “Cloud,” anywhere and every where you look for information, a loan, for something to buy, borrow, or steal, anything that forwards, delivers, and stores information.

Everybody is interconnected,  which is not the same as being interoperatible .  The Internet is like a uncoordinated electronic octopus with countless tentacles, unconnected to any central brain.  It has common mobile operating systems  - like Apple Inc’s iOS and Alphabet Inc’s Android – but even these systems, like the federal government’s systems,  are vulnerable to hackers.

The Internet Monster’s message system is email which has largely  replaced  snail mail,  in the process nearly bringing down the U.S. Postal System.   Almost anyone can hack email, like  convicted sex offender Julian Assuage of Wikileaks.

You can never really hide what you text  on emails.  You can try to hide it, destroy it,   bleachbit it.  Email is the Hacker’s Paradise, that golden treasury and trough of embarrassing  information.

The Internet Monster has many faces and interfaces and interstices.    It produces information overload, spam, malware, malicious spoofs,  global boom blasts,  electronic fatigue and exhaustion.

The Internet Monster has transformed politics.   You can never hide what you have taxted.  Iti is always somewhere in storage.  It is the fodder and grist of controversie.  It is an integral part of vast left-wing and right-wing conspiracies. It may yet undo Hillary Clinton’s campaign – through some September timebomb or Donald Trump’s campaign – through a maladroit tweet,

It has destroyed or displaced multiple industries - brick and mortar stores,  the publishing industries - books and newspapers,  clerks and secretaries and middle manager,  even entire towns. like Rochester, New York, and its film industry.

It has changed personal relationships.   You can no longer engage in  ordinary open conservations  and llo into some’s eyes or read their body language.  You must text.  You must carry your mobile device wherever you go or whatever you’re doing,  like walking, eating, or driving.  You must constantly focus on the screen, look down rather than up,  connect electronically,  to make sure you do not miss anything, no matter how trivial,  as long as your are paying allegiance to the Internet Monster,  which dominates your every waking moment or piling up email messages while you sleep.