For those of us who were teenagers or young adults in the 1980s, it seemed, at least in retrospect, a magical time. Even the music of the 1980s was great. I was a freshman at Lincoln Memorial University in the spring of 1984. That was so long ago that the college academic year was divided into quarters, four instructional terms that lasted approximately ten weeks each. The shift to semesters, three annual instructional terms of approximately sixteen weeks each, started at some point before I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in 1987.
My English instructor during spring quarter 1984 was Heidi Koring. A great part of our assignment for that class was the reading of George Orwell’s classic 1984. One of the great takeaways from that book was the phrase, “Big Brother’s watching you!”
It seems this has come true in these later years due to the advance in technology. We now have computers with which we can have Zoom meetings, where we can see and interact with others in places far from us. There have been stories of people who had cameras on their computer monitors and were being observed without their knowledge.
There have also been numerous instances in which people “butt-dialed” their phones and were heard by others when that was not their intent. And there have been instances in which a person thought they had disconnected a phone call but had not actually been successful in “hanging up”—in some cases the results have been disastrous.
My sister once brought to my attention that she had been able to hear me speaking on my phone. She said I was ranting and raving “something about insurance”. Sounds reasonable for me. Remember—Big Brother (and maybe older sister) is listening!
I was in my home library one evening when my wife came, very upset and in tears. She said, “Well, it’s nice to know what people really think of you!” My first thought was, “What have I done now?” Thankfully, it wasn’t me, but a friend of hers. They had just been on the phone. The “friend” thought she had disconnected, but hadn’t, and my wife heard her friend saying some very harsh things about her. My wife listened for a while, then said into her phone as loudly as she could, “--------, I heard everything you just said about me.”
The friend said, “Mary, is that you?” It turned out that was their last conversation, either by phone or in person. Never forget, Big Brother (or your supposed best friend) is listening!
There are many who think that our cell phones have the capability to listen to what we say. I received a phone call at work one day from my wife. She told me that her car had been keyed while she was attending a graveside service. I told me co-worker that I had to step out for a while to check out my wife’s car, because someone had keyed it. The next day, an advertisement came across my co-worker’s phone about auto body repair for keyed automobiles! Coincidence? Perhaps, but remember—Big Brother is listening.
Does this article make you want to go and purchase Alexa or become more intimate with Siri? Don’t those names sound romantic? I guess it’s easier to market products with such names of mystique than if they were named George or Fred.
There are stories in some of the old science fiction in which machines became endowed with human capacity for thought and emotion and surpassed their human creators, evolving into entities that could no longer be controlled. Are we possibly nearing that point without being aware?
There are those who would scoff at such an idea. They might say, as one of my email tidbits related, “Don’t be worried about your smartphone or TV spying on you. Your vacuum cleaner has been collecting dirt on you for years.” True, but I never knew my vacuum cleaner or dustpan to share my dirt with anyone else. I don’t think anyone ever borrowed my dustpan when it was full of the dirt from my kitchen. They usually took the luxury of dumping my dirt in my yard first before leaving, in many cases without ever returning the dustpan.
Next week I want to talk to you about dummies. You might already be wondering if I can find enough material for that article. Just stay tuned, Faithful Reader, and we will see. Until then, I leave you with this other tidbit of wisdom from my email files. As said by an old farmer:

When you wallow with pigs, expect to get dirty.