I am a data set. This is a recent evolution. My parents and their parents had facts – name, address, age, occupation, etc. – which fixed them in their time and place but did not define them. You could not summon them precisely from their information as from a hologram. You and I exist in our data more exactly and robustly than in person. Think of all the witnesses to our presence:
Credit cards (indicating purchases, whereabouts, preferences)
Computer choices (sites, time spent, images glimpsed, disclosing interests, predilections)
Electronic communications: email, chat groups, Zoom
Social media (whom we contact, who knows whom, what we discuss, thus peer groups)
Location trackers (GPS, chips implanted in our devices/pets, sleepless-as-Cerberus traffic monitors, noting our every move)
Medical records
If you’re a glossaholic – like an alcoholic, only worse): Online words: what we’ve said, when, to whom, our idiolect (this last noun new to me, happy day!)
Receipts and disbursements: bank statements, cash machines, taxis, restaurants…
The computers sleuthing us never sleep or forget. They reconstruct us with excruciating precision like a pointillist painter or Chuck Close. We may object to their depiction – That’s not me! – but we cannot refute it. My sidekick Alistair (a.k.a., ChatGPT) not only hoards my data but, by comparing mine to others’, places me in the human scrum and predicts my motions and notions. In our wired world, privacy should be spelled piracy. No secrets. No excuses or escapes from what we’ve done. No relief from inspection. Howl!
Humans squirm at tireless scrutiny. Dog-pal Henry isn’t troubled in the least, since he is only one, at ease with his facts. Humans are the deceptive species. We pretend to be who we’re not. We mistake ourselves. Comparing our actualities to idealities, we blush as if caught red-handed. I write to understand and endear but also to seem. Folks who know me sometimes smile at the discrepancy between my published and private selves. While I try never to lie, I do my best to arrange my thoughts and language to my advantage, like flowers in a vase.
In theory, there should be some moral benefit to this incessant supervision. If God is on constant patrol, aren’t we less likely to misbehave? My God is a pain, prodding, clearing His throat, murmuring, Is this really what I intend? But my God, like an idealized parent, loves me, hears me out, may even forgive, if I don’t screw up too badly. Computers detect no soul in me, nothing to save or embrace, just my discreditable data. I shiver naked before their blank gaze.
Innocents may imagine they can hide from computers, protecting passwords, adopting aliases, ducking scrutiny. World-beaters like the infamous Epstein’s clientele may imagine they can beat the rap, if ever outed. It’s kind of fun watching the Nameless One flailing to distract us from his pederastic associations (see how carefully I worded that!).
I live my life as if fully disclosed. I’ll be found out, if anyone cares to look. Any chronicler would have a field day comparing what I said to what I did. Trying to hide is both wearying and futile. I’ve been who I’ve been.
I write, I surmise, to appeal my conviction, to counter any grim verdict with a more flattering interpretation of the same facts, to right myself by writing myself, now and to come. Many makers, I’m guessing, share this motivation. If I can make something nice, maybe I wasn’t such a miscreant after all. Let art, like a kaleidoscope, array my data into a pleasant pattern to alleviate your dawn.