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Technombie 4

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Earlier segments here: Technombie 1, Technombie 2, Technombie 3.

She persevered reviewing each spike and drop in the data points with a meticulous eye. The midpoint of the date had one gigantic spike that she knew had been in response to something funny her date had said, resulting in hearty laughter. A dramatic drop followed when her date went to the bathroom leaving Senjina alone resulting in a few moments of anxiety. She hadn’t brought her ScreenSpace™ with her and couldn’t tell what was going on with her body. Consequently she had been forced to sit quietly alone with nothing but her thoughts observing all the other happy, animated people around her.

Towards the end of the date Senjina was pleased to note two additional spikes, including a slight dilation of her pupils during the last one. Both had been the result of physical contact, another accidental hand brushing while putting on coats and a hug with a cheek kiss.

She squealed with excitement. Yes, this one was going to get a second date, at least as far as she could tell. Of course nothing was certain until her counterpart went through his biometric results and it was a match. She could hardly wait to post the update on her private channel and send it over to his channel for comparison. Hopefully there would be a match. But right now, she had to get ready for the infoozian.

The infoozian chair was set up in one corner of her living room. It had come complimentary following the installation of her feed. One could get the infoozian just from being in the apartment, but this often resulted in repeat sessions, whereas sitting in the chair meant it was over in just one sitting.

She settled into the chair hearing the familiar hiss of air leaving the cushion. Her back relaxed as she placed her hands across her tummy and reclined. Almost instantly she was overcome by a light, heady feeling as a voice started talking. It felt like the voice was directly inside of her head, but Senjina dismissed the thought as an impossibility, instead thinking there must be mini-speakers embedded in the chair somehow.

Mayor Snyder Peebles is a good man. He is concerned about your interests. Who cares if he smoked a little crack? The voice droned in a soothing tone, lulling Senjina into a woozy trance.

He’s doing a good job. Mayor Peebles is a good mayor… a good mayor… a good mayor… 

Senjina’s eyes closed and her head lolled to one side.

 

**The story continues here:

Technombie 5

In the Mayor’s Chambers

Jellyfish

Uncategorized

Technombie 3

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When we last saw Senjina, she was silently urging the cab to go faster so she could review the results of her date before getting the emergency infoozian.  Gillian Bean’s crumpled form still remains to be found. Read Technombie 1 and Technombie 2.

A small camera aimed at the entrance alerted the door that Senjina, resident #00098627 from unit #C001213 was approaching. The door responded by opening noiselessly before Senjina’s foot reached the top step.

Senjina smiled at the door, as though a real person had been there to offer this small courtesy. It was another benefit of the high-tech video surveillance system, especially since the upgrade to use Face-to-Face, the latest in facial recognition software. The upgrade had been protested hotly by some of the residents, who insisted on maintaining a minimal amount of privacy about how and when they entered and exited the building. They lost.

She hadn’t been around for that debate, but she fully supported the facial recognition reports she got about her exact entries and departures. Without that, she could never really remember what she had done. She’d also signed up for the add-on feature that allowed certain restaurants and retailers to monitor her building entries. It was useful on days when she came home too exhausted and hungry to make food for herself. The restaurants she liked could monitor both her entrance into the building, combined with biometric stats, like her ghrelin levels and automatically send her delivery dinner options. It was all very convenient.

But tonight there would be no delivery dinner options. Senjina had just come from dinner and the door would sense that cutting off transmission to the restaurants, at least for tonight.

Senjina approached her apartment door and waved her forearm over the knob causing the lock to slide open. She pushed open the door and headed immediately to her viewing station. Only 20 minutes remained before the first infoozian to review the data.

Luckily she had had the foresight to open up her ScreenSpace™ on the viewing table before she left for the date. She had opted for the expandable edition and once again felt very pleased with her decision as she regarded the thin, translucent screen stretched to its maximum size and spread out at the viewing station.

She waved her forearm over the ScreenSpace™ control area and the options appeared as a series of holographic buttons in the lower right corner.

  • Option: Biometrics
  • Time period: 7pm – 9pm
  • Factors: first date, restaurant, noisy

The ScreenSpace™ transformed instantly to a series of brightly colored graphs, numbers, and analyses. Senjina squinted at the upper left hand corner of the screen, where the stats about physiological changes appeared. According to the results, the first time her heart experienced a faint increase it had been an adverse reaction to the appetizer, some greasy, fried things.

Darn, she thought.   She had been so sure the heart pumps she felt during appetizers was from their hands accidentally touching when they reached for the same crispy globule. She hoped it wouldn’t exceed her allowable limit of bad food intake resulting in another unwelcome boost from the health insurance. Her eyes honed in on the spikes when she had been eating salad.

Human Archives

Embarrassment

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At the tender age of 12 something dreadful happened to me at a concert that has scarred me permanently. I was playing in one of my first concerts ever on my bassoon and I didn’t have a black skirt to wear.  As an early developer I felt horribly self-conscious about the hair darkening on my legs and, ahem, other hormonal changes.  My mother scrummaged through her closet and pulled out a black wraparound skirt to cover my girth (as if bassoon playing wasn’t enough, I was also a “husky” kid) and a pair of ancient old lady pantyhose to cover up the hairs.  I was ready.

I felt weird wearing my mother’s clothing.  The pantyhose were old with non-existent elastic and kept slipping down.  A fire alarm went off during the concert and everybody had to evacuate.  I followed the crowd attempting to walk normally and keep the pantyhose from falling.

It was a false alarm.   Everybody slowly filed back into the auditorium.  Ascending the stairs to the stage, at a high point, I couldn’t take it anymore and reached around to yank the nylons up.  I reached my seat and the bass clarinet player informed me that I had “opened up my skirt to everybody”.  Moments later my mother appeared at the edge of the stage also to tell me I’d exposed myself while going up the stairs.  My face was on fire!

I didn’t touch the pantyhose again.  The rest of the evening I walked in small shuffling steps, my knees pressed tightly together.  When I got home I spent a long time in front of the full length mirror in my parents’ bedroom trying to recreate the maneuver I’d done to see how much of myself I exposed to the crowd, alternating cursing at the pantyhose, the wraparound, and then the fire alarm.

I can only imagine how much worse this would have been if digital photography and social media had been around.  My whole tween existence as a husky, hairy-legged, bassoon player would have been even more tragic.

To this day, 20+ years later, I’m still nervous about wearing, or even buying, any kind of wraparound clothing.  The other week I went out in a wraparound dress and felt my usual twinge of residual “tween” panic while dressing.  I wrapped and re-wrapped the dress several times, then double knotted the tie for extra security before I felt comfortable.

 

 

 

Ecuador, Galapagos

Drifting: Elizabeth Bay Mangroves

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After our exciting morning on Urbina Bay and dolphin wrangling, we spent the afternoon in the Elizabeth Bay Mangroves. I’ve had the opportunity to experience mangroves in a number of different places and I’m always struck by the similar qualities between them. Quiet and still.  Peaceful and serene.  Something almost mystical surrounding the tangles of branches dipping low into the brackish waters.

We drifted slowly through the mangroves, paddling in some areas because the terrain was too delicate for a boat motor to power through. Hidden in the snarls of branches we spied the telltale brown fur of a sea lion, tucked away having a nap. Looking down over the side of the panga we could see turtles cruising through the clear waters and lots of fish swimming around.

A sea turtle swimming lazily in the Elizabeth Bay Mangroves.

A sea turtle swimming lazily in the Elizabeth Bay Mangroves.

A small cluster of penguins swam by. They almost looked like ducks swimming above the surface, except for the distinctive black-and-white markings. We also saw a penguin or two hanging out on the lava-crusted shoreline. It was pretty awesome to see penguins, cormorants, turtles, Blue-footed Boobies, and sea lions all in one area. I always associate penguins with Antarctica, cold, and ice so seeing them in such a warm climate threw me off, but in a delightful way.

A couple of penguins swimming around in the mangroves.

A couple of penguins swimming around in the mangroves.

As we were departing, we watched a live nature documentary happening right in front of us. A flightless cormorant had found an octopus and was trying to eat it.

A flightless cormorant sunning its wings in the mangroves.

A flightless cormorant sunning its wings in the mangroves.

The cormorant must toss the octopus up and catch it in its mouth with the soft part first, tentacles straight up in order to eat. Otherwise, as we saw, the octopus fights back and wraps its tentacles all over the cormorant’s face.

Flightless cormorant vs. Octopus

Flightless cormorant vs. Octopus

It was pretty amazing, like watching two nature super-heroes battle it out. The two animals wrestled together for a few rounds before the cormorant triumphed and slurped the octopus down its gullet in a few swift, gulping motions.  Then he swam off like nothing had just happened.

Digital Photos, Social Media

Hiding in Plain Sight

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I’ve personally never tried Instagram, but I have a number of friends who use it.  They all love it.  Instagram provides a platform for people to communicate with each other in a visual way through sharing photos.  The uses for it vary widely from advertising, creating a photo journal, sharing with loved ones, or even posting images of symmetrical breakfast plates.  (Check it out here, pretty neat.)

A few months ago my brother sent me an article on a growing trend, predominantly with female teenagers, with Instagram to create a “Rinsta” account and a “Finsta” account.  Rinsta is the real instagram account, the public facing one with carefully filtered images and witty captions.  Typically these postings will have already gone through an internal friend review process, after checking that nobody else in the friend group was planning on posting it.  Then it will be posted at the most strategic time of day to acquire the greatest amount of “likes”.  Rinsta accounts come with “rules” about how to maintain them.  Life should always be portrayed as fun and idyllic, always a representation of only the best moments.

The Finsta account, ironically enough, is a combination of fake with instagram (according to the Urban DIctionary) and contains unedited images and spontaneous captions.  No internal approvals necessary.  The Finsta account is where a person can feel free to express herself as she likes, without any pressure or worry because the access is tightly controlled.  Typically these accounts are only shared with close friends, so parents or peers won’t be able to see anything.  Whereas Rinsta accounts are available for anyone to see.

So the fake account, Finsta, is used for the real stuff, and the Rinsta account is used for only a select portion of the “real” stuff which is then modified before posting.  Public appearance counts for a lot, but the person can feel true to herself through the illusion of “privacy” created by using an alias and controlled access.  I would assume this is mostly so teenagers can share things with their friends that they wouldn’t want their parents to see.

Digital Dilemma, Digital Photos

Safe Selfies

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Over the last few months I’ve read articles and listened to news stories about people getting injured, dying, or even damaging things while taking selfies.  A number of museums, amusement parks (e.g. DisneyLand), and national monuments have all started banning selfie taking and using selfie sticks to help reduce injury, death, and damage.  Sometimes it’s a matter of public safety since bystanders are often poked or hit with selfie sticks.  Russia recently announced a “Safe Selfie” campaign and created a guide to instruct people on how to take selfies without harming yourself or others.

Once again, I just have to shake my head and wonder why taking selfies is so popular?  Is it for the attention?  Or maybe to “memorialize” a moment by snapping a pic of yourself doing something?  To be competitive? Personally, I think if somebody dies taking a selfie because they’re on a train track or in the middle of a bull run, that’s just natural selection in action.  It’s really not necessary to post ads cautioning these poor, dumb souls.

Recently I saw an advertisement for a selfie spoon from Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal.  The selfie spoon is a selfie stick with a spoon at on one end.  This is to solve the dilemma of either taking a selfie or eating your breakfast.  Whether this is a gag or reality, I feel sad thinking about the time and energy invested into memorializing somebody shoving a spoonful of sugary, bad quality cereal into his/her maw.  Gross.  One guy even crafted his own selfie spoon so we could see him chowing down his grandmother’s gumbo.

The most interesting part of the selfie spoon is it’s a way to get ordinary people to advertise Cinnamon Toast Crunch, or any food, for free.  Lots of companies already harvest data from millions of readily available selfies.  Then they analyze the data to learn about customers and how their brand is used.

This raises concerns for me about the prevalence and availability of selfies on social media and the internet in general.  Publicly posted selfies may end up being used in ways that were never anticipated or expected. I’m not sure what those ways are yet, but I’m sure we’ll find out in the near future.