Shot in the Dark

Category: The Matrix

  • The Social Event of the Season/Your Morning Piñata

    It’s the Woodstock of perfidy! Hail, hail, the gang’s all here*: *Kinda disappointed that ol’ Klaus Schwab couldn’t make it, but there’s hope George Soros will appear in animatronic form.

  • Musk In The Wind

    An Inigo Montoya moment: Democracy. They keep using that word. I do not think it means what they think it means. Of course, what frightens Max Boot is having anything he says face a challenge. Content moderation is especially cool if it means you don’t have to face any discontent. Boot’s preferred usage is a…

  • What The In Crowd Knows

    A tale as old as time: Dominant liberal culture is, if nothing else, fiercely rule-abiding: they get very upset when they see anyone defying decrees from authorities, even if the rule-breaker is the official who promulgated the directives for everyone else.  While I appreciate the willingness of Glenn Greenwald, a man of the Left, to…

  • The Matrix: Natural Selection Meets Text Messaging

    A fifteen-year-old girl is texting while walking along a sidewalk with a friend and falls into an open manhole that workers were just about to cone off (allegedly). She’s okay. Her parents want to sue. But who is really at fault here? Now the important questions here are: How did both people miss an open…

  • The Matrix: It’s not Paranoia

    …when they really are out to get you. …keeping tabs on every Web site they visit, every keystroke they tap, every instant message they send–even the contents of the messages on their personal Hotmail or Gmail accounts. Besides financial fraud, companies find less insidious but still costly forms of abuse such as employees spending long,…

  • Obama Won’t Leave The Matrix

    Obama won’t give up his Blackberry! This is news? Why should he? He’s the Chief Executive. He’s the boss. I’m all for Obanana keeping his smart phone. He’s not just the first African American President. He’s the first President that won’t look stupid thumbing his old racketeering pals a message. “Dude. Like this is so…

  • The Matrix: Collective Intelligence

    We text, email, phone and make purchases in an ever inter-connected world. As our point of accessing the internet has shifted from stationary PC’s to smaller and more mobile devices, The Matrix is matching what we are looking for with where we are at the time and rending the data in the new world of Collective Intelligence, the term…

  • The Matrix Is On Line Two

    Last week in the process of renewing a business credit line, my bank checked my credit as a matter of course. The next day, “Jeff” with “American Equity” or something along those lines left me a message. He was “verifying” a recent transaction and was calling “…to assure me that the terms of my loan…

  • The Matrix: In your back seat.

    Sure enough. As predicted, black boxes in cars will be required in all motor vehicles by 2012. The device can be used by the manufacturer to determine if the car was abused in the case of warranty issues (fair enough) but can also be used by attorneys or law enforcement to gather data that “can and will…

  • I want my Matrix

    …and I want it for free.  Dear Starbucks,  Screw you.  Caribou, Bruegger’s, Dunn Brothers and a host of ma/pa coffee shops and restaurants give me WIFI access to the Matrix for free. I got it this morning while waiting for my oil change at Walser. If I buy an Americano for three dollars plus, I expect…

  • The Matrix has Found You

    I wrote about location-centric devices in the car a few months back and how you may some day be driving along and up pops a banner ad of sorts on your navigation screen. Or who knows, maybe the ads on your radio will be customized based on the businesses you are currently driving by. The…

  • Surviving The Matrix

    The Core of The Matrix is the wireless smart phone. A device as reviled as it is praised. It has brought freedom to our lifestyles while at the same time been the subject of “Hang Up and Drive” bumper stickers. I installed Facebook on mine today. I’ve never been more connected with more people in more places, from…

  • The Matrix Strikes Back

    Is e-mail ruining your life? Delete … now According to a report to be published in October by the New York-based research company Basex, unnecessary interruptions such as spam, other unnecessary e-mail and instant-messages take up 28 percent of the average knowledge worker’s day. So if I spend another 28 percent of my day in…

  • Leaving The Matrix

    I like to keep an open mind to other cultures, viewpoints and philosophies and recently listened to Pema Chödrön’s 3-CD set “Getting Unstuck” during my recent road trip to Milwaukee. It was recommended by a favorite client of mine. Pema Chödrön (formerly known as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown) is an ordained Buddhist nun in the Tibetan vajrayana…

  • The Matrix

    The other day I was thinking about the ever-increasing forms of information and mental stimulation we are subjected to in the course of a day in America. I wonder if the modern human species has lost its ability to truly relax and do nothing; and in doing so, can the species achieve a state of mental pause?…